A combination of antiretroviral drugs and bottle feeding can reduce the chance of an HIV-positive mother transmitting the virus to her newborn to under six percent, French researchers announced Thursday at the international AIDS conference in Toronto.
The study, carried out in Abidjan, Ivory Coast between 2001 and 2005, followed 808 infected women who delivered 711 babies. Without drug treatment, an HIV-positive mother faces a 20 to 45 percent chance of passing the virus to her child. About two million of the nearly 39 million people living with HIV are children, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Conducted by France's National Agency for Research on AIDS (ANRS), the trial tested two drug combinations, both including nevirapine at delivery, alongside either short-term or no breastfeeding. The most effective approach paired AZT and lamivudine with bottle feeding from birth, resulting in an HIV rate of just 5.6 percent among 126 infants. The weakest result, a 15.9 percent transmission rate, came from AZT plus nevirapine followed by brief breastfeeding.
Researchers cautioned that encouraging bottle feeding requires reliable access to clean water and feeding supplies. UNAIDS data from 2005 show fewer than six percent of pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa receive any mother-to-child HIV prevention services.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in August 2006, in its own words.