Study Shows Nevirapine a New Treatment Option for HIV-Positive Infants

A new study shows that HIV-positive babies with stabilized infections "will do just fine switching to a regime of nevirapine, a reverse transcriptase inhibitor," from a more expensive protease inhibitor, Scientific American's "Observations" blog reports (Harmon, 9/7). So far, HIV treatment options for children in the developing world "have been limited by concerns over the possible development of resistance to drugs they received as infants during failed attempts to prevent their infection in the first place," according to HealthDay/U.S. News & World Report (Mozes, 9/7). The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "followed 195 randomized babies and toddlers under 2 for a year" and determined that "[a]bout two thirds of the children with HIV that had switched to the nevirapine were able to maintain a level of fewer than 50 copies of the virus per milliliter of blood," the lowest level technology could detect, "Observations" reports (9/7).

Back to other news for September 2010