Short AIDS Therapy Shown to Cut Child Infection (Reuters)
Originally published by Reuters, April 4, 2002
LONDON (Reuters) — Using anti-AIDS drugs before, during and after giving birth can reduce the odds of a woman infecting her child with HIV, doctors said on Friday.
But they warned that the benefits of the short-term therapy could be jeopardized if the mother breastfeeds the child, which is another way of passing on the virus.
"Introduction of short-course regimens to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1 in less developed countries should be accompanied by interventions to minimize the risk of subsequent transmission via breastfeeding," said Professor Joep Lange of the University of Amsterdam.
In a report in The Lancet medical journal, he and his colleagues reported the results of a study of 1,800 pregnant HIV positive women in South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda who had been randomly selected to receive drug therapy or a placebo at different stages of pregnancy and afterwards.
A quarter of the women were given the antiretroviral drugs zidovudine and lamivudine before, during and after the birth. A second group received the treatment during labor and the delivery, a third group received the therapy only during labor and the remainder were given a placebo.
Six weeks after delivery, the researchers found the rate of transmission of HIV from mother to child in the group of women who had received the drugs before, during and after the birth was the lowest and less than half the rate in the placebo group at 15.3 percent.
Three-quarters of the women in the study breastfed their babies and after 18 months the scientists said the infection rates ranged from a low of 15 percent in the first group and up to 22 percent in the women given the placebo.
"Although therapy targeted at women before delivery, during labor and after delivery was highly effective in reducing perinatal transmission, and should be the preferred short-course regimens where possible, triple drug combinations may be even more effective," Lange said.
Forty million adults and children are living with HIV/AIDS, according to UNAIDS, the umbrella group spearheading the international fight against the disease. The majority of sufferers are in sub-Saharan Africa.
