Baby born with HIV might be cured

A second baby born with HIV may now be free of the virus, researchers announced Wednesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

The child, born outside Los Angeles in April, was given a powerful mix of HIV drugs a few hours after birth, reports said. Because she is still taking the drugs, it’s still too soon to know definitively that she has been cured, her doctors told The New York Times.

But tests have left them optimistic: While most HIV patients on virus-suppressing drugs show some trace of the virus, the baby has shown none.

The Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., based the treatment on the case of a Mississippi baby born three years ago. After receiving the same drug combination, doctors announced last year that the child was HIV-free.