Any hope for infants with HIV-positive mothers?

Formula feeding is cheap and available in developed countries. In other parts of the world, because access to clean water, formula and antiretroviral therapy (ART) is not easy and breast feeding as an option is cheap and comes with known health benefits, many mothers resort to breast feeding even while infected with the HIV virus.

What hope can there be for millions of children at risk? Last month, the Mississipi baby who was thought to have been cured of HIV, disappointingly, was reported with detected levels of the virus. This poses a challenge to pediatric health specialist to proffer new immune-based protective strategies, new vaccines for delivery to children at risk of being infected with HIV virus through breast milk, to think up new ways to boost potentially protective maternal antibodies.

While seeking answers to these challenges, foremost at the minds of these health workers are the effectiveness, facility of administration and the safety of whatever strategies they can think up, even if HIV-preventive nutritional supplements are expected to be part of the offerings.

One fact is clear: in view of the recent news about the Mississipi girl, new strategies have to be pursued to help children at risk of infection with HIV virus through breast milk.

Further reading: Scientists call for new strategy in pursuit of HIV-free generation.

The Immune system versus HIV virus – an unbalanced equation.

What would happen when the police are ill-equipped to combat terrorism? Terrorist become rampageous. That is the situation between the immune system and the HIV virus. Because CD8+ T cells which are responsible for combating and killing the HIV virus are ill-equipped to fight and kill HIV-infected cells, it has not been easy to cure HIV infections.

The problem lies at the doorsteps of instigator and regulatory transcription factors. Transcription factors are responsible for protein synthesis and two of them, T-bet and Eomes, are responsible for development of CD8+ T cells when an HIV infection is detected by the immune system. T-bet is an instigator in that it makes the CD8+ T cells equipped to fight, like in providing them with the right armory and equipment, while Eomes are regulatory in nature because it serves as a memory bank for earlier battles. We could say Eomes make the CD8+ T cells smart.

Unfortunately, the T-bet transcription factor which are supposed to turn the tables in favor of the immune system fails us. When the time to fight arrives, they are exhausted and unable to complete their task. Hence, the CD8+ T cells become ill-equipped to fight and are defeated even while smart.

Like in combating Nigerian terrorism, it is necessary to equip them with better armory and better training. Otherwise, the immune system would not have the opportunity of killing HIV-infected cells that would make it easy to cure HIV.

Further reading: Why the immune system fails to kill HIV.