When she was convinced last August, she called a longtime friend and colleague, Katherine Luzuriaga, a researcher at University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Persaud and Luzuriaga presented information at CROI on five additional children who had been perinatally infected and started antiretroviral therapy at a median of 2 months after birth.
Dr. Gay then reached out to Dr. Persaud and Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga of the University of Massachusetts to perform laboratory studies to help understand what had happened with this toddler.
Dr. Luzuriaga had been working with Dr. Persaud on a study of a group of teenagers who had been born with the virus and treated since infancy and who now had no evidence of virus that could replicate.