Starting in the mid-2010s, the University of Oxford pediatrician and immunologist began working with scientists in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, with the aim of tracking several hundred children who had acquired HIV from their mothers, either during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding.
After putting the children on antiretroviral drugs early in their lives to control the virus, Goulder and his colleagues were keen to monitor their progress and adherence to standard antiretroviral treatment, which stops HIV from replicating. But over the following decade, something unusual happened. Five of the children stopped coming to the clinic to collect their drugs, and when the team eventually tracked them down many months later, they appeared to be in perfect health.
Yes, that is what I read roguetrick as saying. The headline should include the lede “viral load undetectable, even after therapeutics stops”, however, this lede gets buried in the article, instead of highlighted in the headline.
Wouldn’t surprise me if the editor didn’t want to publish the more accurate “viral loads vanish despite stopping antiretroviral drugs” because anti medicine folks would run with it in the wrong direction.
Actually, that’s a very reasonable speculation. I hadn’t thought of that angle.
Ahh okay, the headline implied that for me but you are both correct that it does not outright say so.