A baby born infected with the AIDS virus who got immediate treatment now has no detectable virus in her blood – not quite a cure, but so close to one that it has doctors talking about the possibility.

Her case, presented to a meeting of AIDS researchers that started Sunday, will prompt questions about how early babies should be treated – and further illustrates the possibility that immediate treatment with HIV drugs might stop infection in its tracks and could even have an impact on the AIDS pandemic.

“What we have identified is what we think is the first well-documented case of a functional cure in a neonatal child,” Dr. Deborah Persaud of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, the virologist who led the study, told NBC News.

A functional cure, says Persaud, means the virus isn’t entirely gone, but it’s not doing any damage, either. Doctors think it was because they began therapy for the baby within 48 hours of being infected, she told a conference in Atlanta of HIV specialists.

The child, who lives in rural Mississippi, is now 2 1/2 and healthy. She was, like so many, born to a mother who didn’t know until right before she gave birth that she had the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Mom and baby both got a standard dose of HIV drugs right away – something that has been shown to prevent what’s known as mother-to-child transmission of the virus in newborns.

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Dr. Deborah Persaud of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. She helped discover the case of a toddler who is close to being "cured" of HIV.

The baby was a little premature and so stayed in the hospital. Within 30 hours of birth she was re-tested and had clear evidence of HIV infection. Unusually, she then got a cocktail of three drugs at a dose normally reserved for more advanced cases.  It worked really well – pushing her virus down to what’s called undetectable levels. This is what doctors want with HIV, because if the virus can’t be found in the blood, then it can’t be spreading and damaging the immune system. HIV doesn’t kill directly – it kills patients by damaging their immune systems so bad they can’t fight off other infections.

The baby and her mom, who doctors aren't naming, got regular care and treatment by Dr. Hannah Gay at University of Mississippi Medical Center until she was 15 months old. Then, like so many children, she disappeared off the doctors’ radar screens. The mother brought her back briefly at 18 months but disappeared again but she missed at least eight months worth of drugs. When Gay caught up to her again, the baby was still well, despite having received no treatment. More remarkably, tests showed the virus had not come back.

“My first thought was, ‘oh my goodness. We have been treating an uninfected child,” Gay told NBC News. "But I checked the records which confirmed she was, in fact, infected.”

Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who also worked on the study, piled on with a battery of tests. Even a sensitive test called PCR, which can help find tiny bits of genetic material from a virus, couldn’t detect any evidence of HIV. This went far beyond the usual definition of "undetectable" in treating the AIDS virus - there really was no evidence the virus was there.

“What we did then was to get a group of collaborating laboratories together to apply ultra-sensitive testing  and say ‘can we detect any evidence of virus’,” Luzuriaga says. They did eventually find pieces of genetic material from the virus.

But Persaud has been unable to find any evidence of virus that can invade cells or replicate. “So the baby has remained off treatment. We are just watching and we will follow the baby and do additional testing.”

It’s not a true cure – what doctors call a “sterilizing” cure. There is still virus in the toddler’s body. But it’s not is a form that seems to be doing any damage. It doesn’t seem to be able to spread from one cell to another and it doesn’t seem to be damaging the child’s immune system.

About 34 million people globally are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; 25 million have died from it. While there’s no vaccine, cocktails of powerful antiviral drugs called antiretroviral therapy (ART) can keep the virus suppressed and keep patients healthy. No matter how long patients take ART, however, they are never cured. The virus lurks in the body and comes back if the drugs are stopped. Scientists want to flush out these so-called reservoirs and find a way to kill the virus for good.

“This has major implications for how we begin to think about treating children,” Persaud says. “Perhaps we can spare them a lifetime of treatment.”

But she adds, it’s one case.  “We need to figure out if this can be reproduced or replicated in other infants.”

Babies born to HIV-positive women are different from other HIV patients. Doctors know the precise moment that they are infected and can treat them right away. But usually they treat them with low doses of drugs for about six weeks and then wait to see if infection has really developed before they treat them again. If done right, this treatment around birth can prevent 95 percent of infections.

Up to now, only one person has been documented with a cure – the so-called Berlin patient, Timothy Brown, who was treated for leukemia with a bone marrow transplant that happened to come from a donor with a genetic mutation that makes immune cells resist HIV infection. The transplant replaced his own infected cells with healthy, AIDS-resistant cells. He is remains free of the virus more than five years later.

Dr. Dan Kuritzkes of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School is treating two HIV other patients who, like Brown, got bone marrow transplants for leukemia or lymphoma. His team wants to see if they, too, can be cured. “They are doing fine,” he says – but continue taking HIV drugs to be safe.

But a third patient he was treating suffered a relapse of lymphoma and died. “It sort of underscores what these patients have been through,” he said. No one thinks a bone marrow transplant represents a real-life treatment for anyone with HIV, because it’s so hard on the body.

Kuritzkes said AIDS experts have wondered whether very early treatment of newborns could be in fact treating their infection rather than preventing it.

“It’s exciting because there are undoubtedly other children in this situation,” he said. His team is taking part in several studies looking at whether it is possible to eradicate the reservoirs of virus in adults that should have results within a year.

There are also patients called “elite controllers” who seem to stay well and suppress the virus without the need for drugs.

Luzuriaga says this toddler is not an elite controller. “You can detect HIV DNA in their cells. And you can culture virus from them,” she said. “We just think that this baby has much tighter control, much tighter control. This baby hasn’t rebounded off therapy.”

“Our next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns,” says Persaud.

It might be that quick treatment stopped the virus from hiding out in the baby’s body, and allowed the drugs to do their work and stop the spread of the virus.

Ami Schmitz contributed to this story.

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A major adult filmmaker sued to block a new Los Angeles County law requiring porn actors to wear condoms, calling it a threat to free expression.

Vivid Entertainment contends that Measure B, passed by county voters last fall, violates the First Amendment right to free speech and expression and is unnecessary because the adult industry already has safeguards, such as regular blood testing of actors, to prevent the spread of AIDS and other venereal diseases.

The suit, filed Thursday in federal court, also contends that the law is vague, burdensome and ineffective and is pre-empted by California laws and regulations. It asks the court to block the measure's enforcement and to rule it unconstitutional.

County counsel declined comment Friday, saying they had just begun a review of the case.

The measure requires adult film producers to apply for a permit from the county Department of Public Health to shoot sex scenes. Permit fees will finance periodic inspections of film sets to enforce compliance.

However, public health authorities have not announced specific enforcement measures for the law.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which sponsored the initiative, said the measure will help safeguard the public, as well as porn workers, from sexually transmitted infections.

Adult film actors rallied to oppose the law before its November passage.

"The idea of allowing a government employee to come and examine our genitalia while we're on set is atrocious," sex film star Amber Lynn told the Los Angeles Daily News at the time.

Industry critics also said that fans don't want to see actors using condoms. They contend that if the law is enforced, the 200 or so companies that now produce adult films in Los Angeles, primarily in the San Fernando Valley, will simply move elsewhere, taking with them as many as 10,000 jobs.

"Overturning this law is something I feel very passionate about. I believe the industry's current testing system works well," Steven Hirsch, Vivid's founder and co-chairman, said in a statement. "Since 2004 over 300,000 explicit scenes have been filmed with zero HIV transmission. The new law makes no sense and it imposes a government licensing regime on making films that are protected by the Constitution."

The law also will have "have vast unintended consequences which may undermine industry efforts to protect the health of our actors and actresses," Hirsch said.

Califa Productions, which produces adult films for Vivid, and actors who uses the stage names Kayden Kross and Logan Pierce, joined the suit, which names the county, its district attorney and public health director.

The Associated Press

Ha-ha, I just gave you HIV.

That's what a rape victim was told as she was brutally attacked -- possibly for hours -- near her Philadelphia, Pa., home, the victim's sister tells NBC10.

Philadelphia Police asked for the public’s help Tuesday to help track down the assailant. They made a surveillance video public that they say shows the rapist as he approached the victim and then began beating and raping her.

For more, visit NBC10.com

The "violent, unprovoked" attack happened just after midnight Aug. 29, after the victim, 24, dropped a friend off at a bus stop on Frankford Avenue, police Special Victims Unit Capt. John Darby told reporters Tuesday.

As she walked along Church Street near Griscom Street, the man jumped her from behind, began punching her, forced her into an alley and raped her repeatedly, police said.

“The 24-year-old victim sustained severe head and facial injuries to the point of almost being unrecognizable,” Darby said.

Darby says the suspect also choked the woman until she was unconscious. It's possible she was raped repeatedly possibly over a period of hours.

Several hours later a neighbor saw the bloody victim stumbling down the block and called 9-1-1. She was taken to the hospital where she remained for days before being released. She was tested for HIV -- the results of that test weren't released.

Still visibly bruised, the victim did not want to go on camera Tuesday, but she did tearfully tell NBC10's Lu Ann Cahn that she just wants justice.

Police hoped to deliver that justice without releasing video. Investigators tell NBC10 that they've worked hard trying to capture the suspect but after leads dried up they decided to turn to the public for help.

The suspect is described as a thin, black man in his 20s with a medium complexion and short black hair who stands around 5 feet, 9 inches tall. He wore a white T-shirt, dark pants and dark shoes, cops said.

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Only a quarter of Americans infected with the AIDS virus are getting effective treatment, according to a U.S. government report released Friday -- and the youngest patients are the worst off.  The numbers could worsen if states don’t broaden health care as called for under the 2010 health reform law, scientists worry.

It’s the first comprehensive look by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at who is getting effective care, and it doesn’t paint a promising picture. The findings raise even more alarm bells as study after study presented at the International AIDS Conference in Washington this week show that treatment can help stop the spread of HIV.

“The majority of people living with HIV in the United States are not on antiretroviral treatment, not in stable care,” Dr. Kenneth Mayer of The Fenway Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston told a news conference. “They need to be in care first and then able to get treatment.”

The study finds that just over a third of  HIV patients have steady care -- 34 percent  of African-Americans, 37 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of whites.

Younger patients are the least likely to be getting the cocktails of drugs that can keep them healthy and help keep them from infecting others. Just 15 percent of those aged 25-34 had the virus suppressed to desired levels, compared to 36 percent of those aged 55-64. Only 22 percent of young adults were even getting HIV drugs to treat their infection, the CDC found.

There’s no cure for the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS and no vaccine. HIV has killed 25 million since it first started spreading globally in the early 1980s, and more than 33 million people are infected worldwide. About 1.1 million people in the United States have HIV, and the CDC estimates that 20 percent of them don’t even know it.

“We have to continue to raise the alarm,” CDC’s top AIDS official, Dr. Kevin Fenton, said in an interview. “We have to find that sense of outrage.”

The same factors are driving high transmission and poor treatment rates among some U.S. groups: poverty, a lack of access to medical care, and a lack of education about what causes HIV and what people can do about it. Policymakers need to understand that treating people with HIV saves money, Fenton said. 

“What we now know is that treating HIV is cost-effective. For every dollar spent, you save $2,” Fenton said.

Fenton said the U.S. should pull out the stops on providing condoms, counseling, testing and treatment.

“We need to ensure that states have policies that support routine HIV testing,” Fenton said. “Clearly, this is going to be more challenging in some states than in others.”

Top AIDS experts in the U.S. say no matter what people may think about the moral implications of some of the behavior that leads to HIV infection, it will benefit everyone to get people tested, treated and counseled about controlling their infection.

“Every state really must enact the Affordable Care Act,” said Dr. Judith Aberg, president of the HIV Medicine Association and an AIDS expert at New York University. “States need to fund HIV treatment and prevention. We need to continue this fight.”

Governors of several states have said they will not expand Medicaid, required by the health care law, because they cannot afford it. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that states can decide whether to abide by that provision. States refusing expansion now include Texas, Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance plan for the poor, currently does not cover most low-income adults with HIV. AIDS activists say it’s essential to controlling the epidemic to get coverage for young adults with HIV, and at risk for HIV.

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CINCINNATI - A Cincinnati jury has convicted a former professional wrestler of charges he had sex with women without telling them he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

Hamilton County jurors returned the verdict Wednesday on 14 felonious assault counts against Andre Davis, who wrestled using stage names including Gangsta of Love and Sweet Sexy Sensation.

Prosecutors say the 29-year-old Davis didn't tell a dozen sex partners about his HIV status or lied to them.

The women testified they had unprotected sex with Davis. The judge prohibited attorneys from bringing up whether any of the women was infected.

Defense attorneys challenged whether it was proved Davis was HIV-positive and suggested the women were promiscuous.

World Wrestling Entertainment told Davis in 2009 it wouldn't hire him because he failed a physical by testing positive for HIV.