Researchers at John Hopkins University and Makarere University in Kampala, Uganda, recently reported in the Lancet on the results of their tests of an alternative treatment to prevent children born to HIV-infected mothers from contracting the disease themselves.
Typically, AZT is used to reduce the risk of transmission. Unfortunately, AZT treatment has two drawbacks. First, it has to be given numerous times — the mother receives AZT every three hours during labor and then the infant receives it every day for a week after childbirth. Secondly, the need for numerous doses raises the cost of the treatment.
The John Hopkins and Makarere University researchers tested a much simpler regimen involving anti-HIV drug nevirapine. In the study, a control group was administered the AZT therapy and the experimental group was given nevirapine once to the mother during labor and then once to the infant immediately after birth.
The result was that the infants administered nevirapine were less likely to be HIV positive 18 months after birth than were those administered AZT. That represents a 41 percent lower risk for infants given nevirapine.
This confirmed results of a 1999 study, also in Uganda, in which infants and mothers were given either zidovudine or nevirapine. That study found that those receiving zidovudine were twice as likely to be HIV positive as those receiving nevirapine, though that study only tracked the infants several months after birth rather than the extended period of the latest study.
Johns Hopkins researcher Dr. J. Brooks Jackson said of the finding,
This use of nevirapine, if widely implemented, has the potential to prevent several hundred thousand new infections every year. This regimen is extremely simple, safe and inexpensive, but access to HIV testing and counseling remains a huge obstacle. Fortunately, the recent availability of funds for HIV prevention and treatment for Africa from the Bush AIDS relief plan will likely make a huge difference in the implementation of this nevirapine regimen.
Sources:
Article: Newer HIV Drug Protects Babies Better Against Virus. Reuters Health, September 13, 2003.
Cheap drug ‘prevents HIV births’. The BBC, September 12, 2003.
Drugs to Newborns Block HIV Infection from Moms. Kenna Brigham, Johns Hopkins University, October 13, 2003.
Finding a Way to Fight Mom/Baby HIV Transmission. Johns Hopkins University, September 15, 2003.