Doctors announced this weekend that they effectively cured a baby born with HIV, paving the way for a huge change in how we treat infants born with the virus and perhaps in the number of children with HIV/AIDS. 

There have been reports in the past of babies clearing the virus without treatment, and a few years back doctors cured an adult man with leukemia of HIV using a bone marrow transplant, but this is the first case of curing a baby born with the virus. 

The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 babies were newly infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than three million children globally are living with H.I.V.

If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world. That could give a lift to research aimed at a cure, something that only a few years ago was thought to be virtually impossible, though some experts said the findings in the baby would probably not be relevant to adults.

This is absolutely incredible.