Mississippi baby

Key takeaways

Mississippi baby belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mississippi baby to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mississippi baby from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Mississippi baby (born 2010) is a Mississippi girl who in 2013 was thought to have been cured of HIV. She had contracted HIV at birth from her HIV-positive mother. Thirty hours after the baby was born, she was treated with intense antiretroviral therapy. When the baby was about 18 months old, the mother did not bring the child in for scheduled examinations for the next five months. When the mother returned with the child, doctors expected to find high levels of HIV, but instead the HIV levels were undetectable. The Mississippi baby was thought to be the other person, after the "Berlin patient," to have been cured of HIV. As a result, the National Institutes of Health planned to conduct a worldwide study on aggressive antiretroviral treatment of newborn infants of mothers with HIV infections. It was thought that aggressive antiretroviral therapy on newborn infants might be a cure for HIV. On July 10, 2014, however, it was reported that the child was found to be infected with HIV. The worldwide study planned by the NIH continues in 2023 at 50 sites as clinical trial NCT02140255 under the same principal investigator.

Background In 2010, the "Mississippi baby" was a girl born by spontaneous vaginal delivery to an HIV infected mother at University of Mississippi Medical Center. The mother had received no prenatal care. During labor, the mother was tested for HIV and found to be positive. She gave birth to the baby before antiretroviral therapy could be delivered to prevent the transmission of HIV from the mother to the baby. When the baby was 30 hours old, Dr. Hannah Gay made the decision to begin aggressive antiretroviral therapy before the test results were available. The baby was tested for HIV at 30 and 31 hours of age and found to be infected.Antiretroviral therapy was continued and the baby was tested at 6, 11, and 19 days of age. All three tests were positive for HIV. At age 29 days, she was tested again and HIV levels were found to have dropped below detectable levels. During the girl's first year, she was not breast fed and adherence by the mother to the antiretroviral therapy was determined by examining pharmacy records and by HIV testing. During this time, adherence to the therapy regimen was determined to be adequate. At 18 months of age, there was concern about adherence to the therapy regimen, but HIV levels remained below detectable levels. Between 18 and 23 months of age, the infant missed all clinical visits and the mother reported that she had stopped the antiretroviral therapy when the child was 18 months old—normally therapy would not have been stopped. The infant was tested and HIV levels were unexpectedly below detectable levels. Antiretroviral therapy was therefore not restarted. The mother of the Mississippi baby tested positive for HIV 24 months after delivery. She began antiretroviral therapy 26 months after delivery and was still positive for HIV 28 months after delivery. As of July 2014, the child was 46 months old.

Reported cure In October 2013, the physicians in charge of the Mississippi baby's antiretroviral therapy reported that at 30 months, 12 months after antiretroviral therapy stopped, HIV levels in the child were found to be below detectable levels. They first reported these results at 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta and subsequently published them in The New England Journal of Medicine. Tests showed that the HIV DNA was still present but at levels similar to those in the only other person thought to be "functionally" cured of HIV (i.e., "control of viral replication and lack of rebound once they come off antiretroviral medications"), the "Berlin patient". Robert F. Siliciano hypothesized that the infant girl received antiretroviral therapy before producing memory T cells, which are immune cells that can serve as a viral reservoir for HIV. If treatment is received before they develop, there may be no place in the body for HIV to hide from antiretroviral drugs.

HIV re-emergence On July 10, 2014, at a news conference held at the National Institutes of Health, health experts announced that detectable levels of HIV had been found in the child in tests conducted a week earlier. In two separate tests, they found that her blood levels of HIV had gone from undetectable to 10,000 copies of HIV per milliliter. According to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, this result "is a disappointing turn of events for this young child, the medical staff involved in the child's care and the HIV/AIDS research community". Hannah Gay told NPR that the re-emergence of the virus "felt very much like a punch to the gut". The Mississippi baby had been off her strong antiretroviral therapy for 27 months. Her HIV status was monitored every 6 to 8 weeks during that time with regular clinical visits. After her HIV status was confirmed by testing, she was placed back on antiretroviral therapy. By July 10, there were clinical indications that the therapy was working and reducing her viral load.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mississippi baby

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mississippi baby claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mississippi baby before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mississippi baby ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mississippi baby

In research: Mississippi baby appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mississippi baby in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mississippi baby is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2010 births, HIV/AIDS, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mississippi baby outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Mississippi baby in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mississippi baby means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mississippi baby out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mississippi baby in simple terms?

The Mississippi baby (born 2010) is a Mississippi girl who in 2013 was thought to have been cured of HIV. She had contracted HIV at birth from her HIV-positive mother.

Why does Mississippi baby matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mississippi baby?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mississippi baby.