【英语语言学习】艾滋病的治疗

On a Monday, it's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.

 

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

 

And I'm Renee Montagne.

 

Scientists believe a little girl who was born with HIV has been cured of the infection. She is the first child and only the second person in the world known to have been cured since the virus touched off a global pandemic more than 30 years ago.

 

NPR's Richard Knox says the case has major implications for hundreds of thousands of children around the world who get infected with HIV at birth every year.

 

RICHARD KNOX, BYLINE¹: Doctors aren't releasing the child's name, but we know she was born in Mississippi and is now two-and-a-half years old and healthy. Doctors say she got HIV before birth from her mother. It's rare for children to be born with HIV in the United States these days. There were fewer than 130 last year. That's because most HIV-infected pregnant women get antiviral drugs that prevent their babies from being infected.

 

The Mississippi child's surprising cure came about from happenstance and the quick thinking of a University of Mississippi pediatric specialist named Hannah Gay.

 

HANNAH GAY: The child came to our attention as a high-risk exposure to maternal² HIV.

 

KNOX: High-risk because her mother hadn't had any prenatal care, so she didn't get antiviral drugs during pregnancy³. So Dr. Gay decided⁴ to begin treating the child immediately, within 31 hours of birth. That's quicker than most infants born with HIV get treated. And she gave higher-than-usual doses of three powerful HIV drugs.

 

Over the months, standard tests could detect no virus in her blood. That's normal. Then her mother stopped coming in for checkups.

 

GAY: I saw her at 18 months, and then after that, did not see her for several months, and we were unable to locate her for a while.

 

KNOX: When they tracked her down, the mother said she'd stopped giving antiviral drugs six or seven months earlier. Dr. Gay expected to find HIV in the child's blood. But to her astonishment⁵, tests couldn't find any virus.

 

GAY: My first thought was: Oh, my goodness. I've been treating a child who's not actually infected.

 

KNOX: A look at the earlier blood work confirmed that she had been infected with HIV at birth. So Gay then thought the lab must have made a mistake with the new blood samples. She ran the tests again.

 

GAY: When all those came back negative, I knew that something odd was afoot.

 

KNOX: That was last August. Since then, researchers at labs all over the country have run ultra-sensitive tests on the baby's blood. A couple of tests have found pieces of the virus, but no evidence that HIV is replicating⁶ in the child's cells.

 

Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga of the University of Massachusetts says this amounts to what's called a functional⁷ cure.

 

KATHERINE LUZURIAGA: Which means the control of viral replication and lack of rebound⁸ once they come off anti-retroviral medications.

 

KNOX: The only other such case known to AIDS researchers is the so-called Berlin patient - a man named Timothy Brown. But his treatment involved a bone marrow⁹ transplant from a donor¹⁰ who's genetically¹¹ resistant¹² to HIV. That's not something that can be easily duplicated.

 

By contrast, the Mississippi child's cure involved readily available medicines. Luzuriaga says the toddler's cure has electrified¹³ researchers searching for a cure.

 

LUZURIAGA: It has.

 

(LAUGHTER)

 

LUZURIAGA: It has. And we just want to see if we can replicate¹⁴ this. Because if we were able to replicate this, I think this would be very good news for our children and their families.

 

KNOX: Details of the case were presented yesterday at a scientific conference by Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University.

 

DEBORAH PERSAUD: This is definitely a game-changer. And so this case was sort of the inspiration and provides the rationale to really move forward.

 

KNOX: Plans are underway to mount studies to see if early, aggressive treatment can cure other children of HIV. But Persaud says it will be a while before researchers can figure out when it might be safe to deliberately¹⁵ stop antiviral drugs.

 

This research will be high-priority. While mother-to-child infections are uncommon¹⁶ in the United States, there are almost a thousand a day in the developing world - 330,000 a year.

 

AIDS researchers foresee a day when the same treatment could give many of these children a lifetime free of toxic¹⁷ antiviral drugs.

 

Richard Knox, NPR News.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 maternal   

adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的

参考例句：

• He is my maternal uncle.他是我舅舅。
• The sight of the hopeless little boy aroused her maternal instincts.那个绝望的小男孩的模样唤起了她的母性。

3 pregnancy   

n.怀孕，怀孕期

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
• Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 astonishment   

n.惊奇，惊异

参考例句：

• They heard him give a loud shout of astonishment.他们听见他惊奇地大叫一声。
• I was filled with astonishment at her strange action.我对她的奇怪举动不胜惊异。

6 replicating   

复制( replicate的现在分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Applications create these partitions for storing and replicating data. 应用程序创建这些分区用来储存和复制数据。
• The closest real things to these creatures were bits of self-replicating RNA. 最贴近这些造物的实物是能做一点微不足道的自复制的核糖核酸。

7 functional   

adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的

参考例句：

• The telephone was out of order,but is functional now.电话刚才坏了，但现在可以用了。
• The furniture is not fancy,just functional.这些家具不是摆着好看的，只是为了实用。

8 rebound   

v.弹回；n.弹回，跳回

参考例句：

• The vibrations accompanying the rebound are the earth quake.伴随这种回弹的振动就是地震。
• Our evil example will rebound upon ourselves.我们的坏榜样会回到我们自己头上的。

9 marrow   

n.骨髓；精华；活力

参考例句：

• It was so cold that he felt frozen to the marrow. 天气太冷了，他感到寒冷刺骨。
• He was tired to the marrow of his bones.他真是累得筋疲力尽了。

10 donor   

n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体

参考例句：

• In these cases,the recipient usually takes care of the donor afterwards.在这类情况下，接受捐献者以后通常会照顾捐赠者。
• The Doctor transplanted the donor's heart to Mike's chest cavity.医生将捐赠者的心脏移植进麦克的胸腔。

11 genetically   

adv.遗传上

参考例句：

• All the bees in the colony are genetically related. 同一群体的蜜蜂都有亲缘关系。
• Genetically modified foods have already arrived on American dinner tables. 经基因改造加工过的食物已端上了美国人的餐桌。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 基因与食物

12 resistant   

adj.(to)抵抗的，有抵抗力的

参考例句：

• Many pests are resistant to the insecticide.许多害虫对这种杀虫剂有抵抗力。
• They imposed their government by force on the resistant population.他们以武力把自己的统治强加在持反抗态度的人民头上。

13 electrified   

v.使电气化( electrify的过去式和过去分词 )；使兴奋

参考例句：

• The railway line was electrified in the 1950s. 这条铁路线在20世纪50年代就实现了电气化。
• The national railway system has nearly all been electrified. 全国的铁路系统几乎全部实现了电气化。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 replicate   

v.折叠，复制，模写；n.同样的样品；adj.转折的

参考例句：

• The DNA of chromatin must replicate before cell division.染色质DNA在细胞分裂之前必须复制。
• It is also easy to replicate,as the next subsection explains.就像下一个小节详细说明的那样，它还可以被轻易的复制。

15 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

16 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

17 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。