Women given the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention drug nevirapine to protect their fetus should not use an HIV-drug regimen that contains nevirapine for at least one year after childbirth, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
A new UAB study found that while nevirapine works well to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission, a single dose of nevirapine in infected pregnant women can trigger resistance to some forms of the AIDS-drug cocktail known as combination antiretroviral treatment (ART). This nevirapine-induced resistance fades after about 12 months and no longer hinders ART, says UAB Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Jeffrey S.A. Stringer, M.D., the study’s lead author.
The findings are published in PLoS Medicine, a journal of the nonprofit Public Library of Science.
Single-dose nevirapine is widely used to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, an infection that affects more than 30 million people globally and leads to more than 2 million AIDS-related deaths each year.
“This study shows that women who need treatment more than 12 months after using nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission safely can use standard first-line treatments in their countries,” says Stringer, director of the UAB-affiliated Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia. “Women who need treatment sooner than that should use a combination that does not contain nevirapine, typically an ART regimen that contains protease-inhibitor drugs.”
The UAB study included 878 infected women in Zambia, Cote d’Ivoire and Thailand. Some were given single-dose nevirapine and others were not; all participants were given ART immediately upon confirmed infection and monitored for one year.
Nevirapine continues to be the backbone of anti-HIV therapy in the developing world, and its usefulness in preventing mother-to-child transmission is confirmed in the new study, Stringer says.
The research is a collaboration between several partners: UAB; the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Global AIDS Program; the Centers for Infectious Disease Research in Lusaka, Zambia; the Catholic Medical Missions Board; the Lusaka Urban District Health Management Board; the University of Nairobi; Siriraj Hospital and Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok; the Thailand Ministry of Public Health; and Northrop Grumman Corp. Funding support for the study is provided by the CDC.
[University of Alabama at Birmingham ]
A South African doc says they have come up with a sure way to get rid of HIV once and for all. According to him an organisation(his) whos idea is supported by a number of international organisations, the idea is to run compulsory HIV testing around the globe and begin treating those found to be infected, By 2015 new infections would have been halted and by 2050 all those infected would have died and that would be the end of HIV on the planet. What is not clear is whether those positive would be isolated till they die but he says the current method is not working as most people treat the availble treatments as a cure and therefore contiue been reckeless spreading the virus in their wake.
If you ask me this should have been plan A from the start. Isolate those infected.
No.1 you don’t know what it is to live with HIV god bless you.
no 1 how can anyone even come up with what just came out of yr mouth not everyone got or get’s infected as a result of infection.get some education then people wont feed you with rubbish.
that was supposed to read not everyone gets infected as a result of recklessness,how about poor rape victims?innocent and unsuspecting wives or husbands?the list goes on
The statement on #1 is by a leading scientist Dr Brian Williams of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) not my idea. Yes there are people who are innocent and find themselves with HIV but in most cases they picked up from someone who was reckless. I am not trying to be harsh but how many lives(innocent lives)would have been saved if that was the first plan?
ZINGA I am very educated thanks- like i said those where not my senitments. Google search HIV/AIDS eradicated by 2050.
LONDON- like I said its not discrimination or hurting feelings but literaly the survival of the human race.
only iletracy can come up with such inhumane ideas if you are not promiscous u need not worry about living on the same planet as hiv victims may God have mercy on you no 1 for thinking such a thing
Well glad to know that you are very educated.I guess any education counts for something. More power too you.
South African attitudes to HIV have historically(or generally) not been the most encouraging. Therefore this scientist’s views should be seen from that perspective. Sharpe you did say this should have been the plan from day one.
Science especially medicine is a noble profession and should really focus on saving lives. The idea is cowardly and runs against medical ethics. If he has failed to come up with a humane solution he should probably raise his hands. he is clearly in the wrong field and should be a leading spokesperson for something like the chitemene system
I should say that we have no say in our creation or anybody’s for that matter. God himself who created us should have a final say on when we checkout. This scientist will be surprised that he gets infected in the lab or gets raped or maybe his close relative(like a child) gets infected.Then what?? We are now on a mission to organise a forced blood transfusion on him so that we can isolate him and skin him first. Mambala!!
Bwale- kindly take time to read the comments and understand before you jump onto your keyboard.
Zinga- maybe you should be in the medical field. What do you suggest should be done about HIV? The pilot schemes of mass testing will be conducted in Southern Africa, US and some European countries. Like I stated it is not clear whether the plan is to isolate those positive for treatment, that will be something the doctors behind the schemes have to answer. I am merely letting my fellow bloggers on, dont shoot me! Like many people I have lost many loved ones to this terrible disease. What I meant was Why wasnt plan A to isolate those infected with HIV when they realised the disease was not curable? By this I mean the first 100/1000 cases of HIV? Anyway that is history now.
Can one from the medical fraternity offer some update about this story which was repoted on Nov 2008 about a patient from berlin who has been AIDS free for two years after having a bone marrow transplant to cure his leukaemia.This 42 yr old man was currently fighting off his leukaemia treatments,his haematologist,Dr.Gero Hutter,deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation making his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV.In the past,researchers discovered that some people remain uninfected despite continously engaging in un protected sex with HIV-positive partners.These were found to have a genectic mutation that made them practically immune to HIV.This mutation prevents a molecule called CCR5 from…
Sharpe – that is not my calling, unfortunately it requires a certain type of person and I avoid hospitals etc as much as possible. My point really is that any science that involves peoples lives (individual or societal) should be subject to a higher moral standard. The Americans and the Nazi in the early part of the twentieth century up until after world war 2 were involved in ground breaking scientific experiments alot of which were found to morally wrong for instance the syphilis experiments in the US and some of Mengele and others experiments for the Reisch. The trials(or tribunals) after WW2 are what led to what we now know as medical ethics. There is always science that will try to ignore morality and we are all dutibound to point this out so as to protect our much valued human rights
@sharp,
sorry but I have to agree with Zinga on the lack of education on your side (Sharp). I read this doctors report and I can see that you totally misunderstood it. There are a few things you need to know then you will understand what this doctor meant. If you have sex with someone who has just had certain ARV combinations, you will not get infected because of what the ARV’s do to the HI-Virus. It makes the virus subdue to a point that the virus cannot transfer to another person even via sex. This is how couples with one of them being HIV positive can have babies if they so wish. So this doctors theory works around this principle that if everyone that is positive is on certain ARV combinations, then even if they have unprotected sex they will not be passing the virus on to other…