Cuba first to ​eliminate mother-to-baby HIV transmission

An important victory against AIDS,Cuba has become the first country to eliminate the transmission of HIV and syphilis from mother to baby, the World Health Organisation has announced.

The WHO’s director general, Margaret Chan, said it was “one of the greatest public health achievements possible” and an important step towards an Aids-free generation.

Over the past five years, Caribbean countries have had increased access to antiretroviral drugs as part of a regional initiative to eliminate mother-to-child transmission.

HIV and syphilis testing for pregnant women and their partners, caesarean deliveries and substitution of breastfeeding have also contributed to the breaking of the infection chain, said the WHO.

Carissa Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organisation, which partnered with the WHO on the initiative, said: “Cuba’s achievement today provides inspiration for other countries to advance towards elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.”

It is estimated that each year 1.4 million women living with HIV become pregnant. Untreated they have a 15-45% chance of transmitting the virus during pregnancy, labour or breastfeeding. The risk drops to just over 1% if the mother and baby are treated with antiretrovirals.

Globally, more than 35 million adults and children are living with HIV but the infection rate has slowed significantly, with 2.1 million becoming HIV positive in 2013, down from 2.9 million in 2005, according to UNAids data.

Scientists have said eradicating Aids is feasible if HIV prevention continues to grow, even if there is no cure. The reduction in infection rates in Cuba is seen as a major breakthrough in the campaign to rid the world of the virus.

Incidence of syphilis transmission is close behind with 1 million pregnant woman worldwide infected. This can be eliminated with simple treatments such as penicillin during pregnancy.

In 2013, only two babies were born with HIV in Cuba, and only five born with congenital syphilis.

According to the WHO, the number of children born every year with HIV has almost halved since 2009, to 240,000 in 2013.

Microbiome May Become Next Fingerprint

A person's gut bacteria and the colony of microbes that live in the body and on the skin may serve as a unique identifier, much like a fingerprint, researchers said.

The study led by Harvard University is the first to investigate just how identifiable people are based on their bacteria, which can vary substantially based on a person's age, diet, geographic location and overall health.

"Linking a human DNA sample to a database of human DNA 'fingerprints' is the basis for forensic genetics, which is now a decades-old field," said lead author Eric Franzosa, research fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard.

"We've shown that the same sort of linking is possible using DNA sequences from microbes inhabiting the human body -- no human DNA required."

Scientists found that stool samples were particularly reliable. Up to 86 percent of people could be identified by their gut bacteria after one year.

Skin samples were less reliable. About one third of those could be matched to a person after one year, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But even if the samples could not be matched, there were very few false positives. In most cases, either a match was made or it was not, but rarely did it identify the wrong person.

The study was based on a pool of 120 people, among the 242 who have donated their stool, saliva and skin samples to the Human Microbiome Project, which maintains a public database for researchers.

Hacking Bacteria to Do Our Bidding

A computer science algorithm was used to establish individual codes based on the donors' microbiomes. These codes were then compared to the same people's samples collected during follow-up visits, as well as to a pool of strangers.

Researchers said their study shows it is possible to match human microbiome samples across databases.

But they also raised the issue of ethics, warning that the practice could expose sensitive personal information such as the presence of a sexually transmitted infection, which could be detected from the microbiome without the subject's own DNA or consent.

"Although the potential for any data privacy concerns from purely microbial DNA is very low, it's important for researchers to know that such issues are theoretically possible," said senior author Curtis Huttenhower, associate professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at Harvard