Author: Akshat Rathi

Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News. He has previously worked at Quartz, The Economist and The Conversation. His writing has appeared in Nature, The Guardian and The Hindu. He has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

Researchers ‘cure’ HIV infection in a baby

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On Sunday, U.S. researchers reported that a baby girl has been effectively cured of HIV infection with the use of standard antiretroviral drugs. This is an exciting development giving hope that AIDS, which is caused by HIV, may be cured in young children, but there are many steps to be taken before that can happen.

In 2010 a girl, whose identity has not been revealed, was infected by HIV at birth because her mother was carrying the infection. Within 30 hours of being born, the baby was treated with potent antiretroviral therapy that consists of three different drugs. The treatment was continued and in under a month the baby’s infection dropped significantly and remained so for further 18 months. Then, for reasons unknown, the mother stopped the baby’s treatment.

Usually stopping the treatment gives the infection a chance to flare up. When doctors saw the baby again after more than five months, they were expecting that HIV test would be positive. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist who cared for the baby, told The Guardian, “All the tests came back negative, very much to my surprise.”

It is not clear why this happened. Rolando Barrios, a pharmacologist at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, says: “It is possible that an earlier intervention stopped HIV from lodging into the immune cells.” Barrios told The Hindu that sometimes there is a 48-hour window after catching the infection to stop its irreversible spread.

HIV infection takes hold in the human body by infecting long-lived white blood cells called CD4. If antiretroviral drugs are given early enough, they can block HIV from infecting CD4 cells. But if it is too late for that, these drugs can only curtail the replication of the virus. Which means that, on stopping the drug treatment, the virus becomes free to start replicating again.

In the reported case an early intervention may have stopped the spread and continued treatment reduced whatever infection was left. But very little can be said unless this can be repeated in many babies.

Doctors found out that the girl was rid of HIV, as far as can be detected, only because the drug treatment was stopped for many months. But this should not encourage others to stop their treatment, stressed the researchers. “We must be cautious about this singular result”, says Barrios.

Current treatments, if given at the appropriate time, can already stop up to 98% babies from being infected by their HIV-infected mothers. So of the 330,000 babies born with HIV annually, many can already be saved from the infection if these drugs are made available. Nonetheless, this case is remarkable because it opens a new line of investigation.

First published on thehindu.com.

UPDATE: There are questions being raised whether the baby was infected with HIV or not. The Hindu reports that the child wasn’t carrying any HIV antibodies. These should’ve been present even if the infection had been cured. Researchers suggest that some HIV particles can disappear from the newborn within four months without causing infection.

The month that was February

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This month onwards I’ll do a monthly round-up of activities. A sort of reflection on all the interesting things that I got to do.

Writing

I feel that it was a good come back month. After a break of not writing much in December and January, because of the PhD viva preparation, I was glad to have written more than I thought I would (list below).

My favourite piece was Flea market. I learnt lots and the researchers were very helpful. The reference to Jonathan Swift’s poem, which I thought worked very well, I have to admit, was Geoff Carr’s (my editor) idea.

For The Economist

  1. (Cancer) Refusing to die: How exposing cancer cell’s trickery can help our own immune system to fight cancer
  2. (Pharma industry) Teaching old pills new tricks: With fewer new drugs, it may seem that the pharma industry is doomed. But there may be a way out
  3. (Ecology) Flea market: The world’s most abundant organism may just have got trumped for the prize by its own killer
  4. (Atmospheric science) From dust to lawn: How desert sands from Sahara cause rainfall in California (and presumably beyond)

Other places

  1. (Book Review) Innovation Generation by Roberta Ness: How to produce creative and useful scientific ideas – Chemistry World
  2. (Chemistry and Biology) NO for longevity – A small gaseous molecule may hold key to a longer life – Chemistry World
  3. (Writing) With so much good writing, is it worth struggling for some more? – My guest post on SA Incubator, a blog for young and upcoming science writers
  4. (Startups) One startup has attempted to solve India’s bus problem – My first post on Quartz, an online global news outlet launched by the Atlantic
  5. (Geoscience) A submerged continent found – My first post for The Hindu‘s weekly science page published in all their print editions

On my science blog The Allotrope

  1. (Environment) India and endosulfan: A bitter harvest : India’s response to the ill-effects of a toxic pesticide has been slow and inadequate
  2. (Health) Chest X-rays are not effective at detecting TB infections: When immigrating why should you be exposed to X-rays for no good reason?
  3. (Cell Biology) Manipulation of biological clocks teaches an important lesson: Nature’s puzzling way of adding inefficiencies in a biological system in order to increase help an organism thrive
  4. (Ecology) Domestic cats are mass killers: The Oatmeal got it right. How much do cats kill? Too. Damn. Much.

Reading 

This month I set myself the challenge of reading 10 books. The plan was to, on completion of the challenge, extend it to reading 100 books in one year. Sadly I could only do 5 books (two half-read books don’t count). But this hasn’t dampened my resolve. I would still like to complete reading 100 books because there is a lot of value in reading books. So even though I couldn’t live up to my own challenge this month, I am going to try to do it over the next 11 months. Perhaps this will give me some leeway in catching up to my reading when I fall back (like I have this month!). Here’s a list of books and links to their reviews that I completed this month:

  1. Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles by Ruchir Sharma (292 pages)
  2. The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night-time by Mark Haddon (226 pages)
  3. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer (307 pages)
  4. QED: The strange theory of light and matter by Richard Feynman (172 pages)
  5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (284 pages)

Listening

I discovered a new band, thanks to Loudwire, that I liked instantly: Dead Sara. The lead singer, Emily Armstrong, has this rusty voice that works really well with the music. I could also feel her passion for the song, which is always something that helps the listener connect to the music.

I listened to these songs on repeat:

  1. Dead Sara – Weatherman
  2. Water – Evolution (especially while reading Foer’s book)
  3. Bentley Rhythm Ace – Bentley’s Gonna Sort You Out (good writing music)
  4. Queens of the Stone Age – Autopilot

Travelling

In the first week of February I had everything set for a trip to Monaco with some Oxford mates. Sadly I couldn’t get a visa. Some of it was my fault, but mostly it was because of the stupidly inflexible system. Apart from not getting to go to a cool destination with friends, losing lots of money and feeling sad, I also got a big C on my passport instead of the visa. (No idea what C stands for, and I’m not keen to find out).

On a happier note: I did manage to go to Ireland, which is a lovely place. Not so different from the UK though. Dublin was exciting and the country side was beautiful. February is not the best month to be in Ireland, but I was luck to find two sunny and slightly warm days. Here is a teaser, taken on the cliff walk from Bray to Greystones:

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Journey by the sea

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A white man’s burden

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Review of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

Even though it’s less than 100 years ago, the 1930s was a very different time from today. Racial discrimination was rife in America even though it had been sometime since slavery had been banned. To Kill a Mocking Bird is a story narrated by an 8-year old of that period as she learns her way of life in Maycomb, a (fictional) sleepy town in Alabama.

From simple struggles of learning to settle in school, of not having a mother, of trying to be a girl to that of dealing with a father who fights against racial discrimination, Harper Lee does a great job of describing Jean Louis Finch’s story. Lee’s vivid story-telling endears the reader to Jean Louis’s every up and down.

Atticus Finch, Jean Louis’s father, is the central character. Although the society around him blames him for many faults, one that he definitely does not deserve is that of being a bad parent. He has a laid back attitude with his son and daughter, but one that helps them each to flourish in their own ways. He hides little from his kids and respects each of their quirks.

In an incestuous town of white folks, Atticus is made to defend a black guy who is convicted of raping a white woman. A situation in which the weaknesses of being human and the ideal goals of a justice system come head-to-head. Through the trial and Jean Louis’s everyday life, the reader meets characters of every kind. There is a brother to look up to, an over-bearing aunty, a family whose kid never leaves home, a wise old lady, nasty cousins, a motherly black woman, among others. Each of their personality has something to offer.

But there is a discomforting feeling to read how this intelligent 8-year old is able to describe and explain very complex social phenomena, but is still a naive girl who is trying to fit in society. This disconnect is more apparent to me having just read The Curious Incident of a Dog at the Night-time, where the narrator is a kid with Asperger’s syndrome and the reader sees the world “exactly” through his eyes.

Lee’s book has its slow spells, but a reader who endeavours is rewarded. As with all good books, Lee is elegant at creating strands of stories that run parallel to the main one. Though sometimes I wished that some strands were given less space than they deserved.

While it is a great story, and arguably a better piece of literature, I wouldn’t go so far as to call this book one of the greatest I’ve ever read (as many of my friends seem to suggest).