Doctors say that a single dose of the drug nevirapine during labor is not only effective in prevention of mother-to-child HIV-1 transmission but also safe, cheap, and easy-to-use.
However, if the newborn still became infected despite the drug, the child was far more likely to acquire a strain of the virus that was resistant to the medications most commonly used to treat HIV.
According to the study, published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, scientists conducted clinical trials on 199 of 397 HIV-infected pregnant women who sought care at two public sector health facilities in Lusaka and Zambia.
Patients were given single doses of two other drugs tenofovir and emtricitabine along with the nevirapine during birth, which are known as non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor drugs, or NNRTIs.
The second group of 198 pregnant women were given only the niverapine, as has been standard practice. Both groups also took a short course of a fourth drug, zidovudine, also known as AZT.
The researchers found that after six weeks of delivery, women given the four-drug combo were 53 percent less likely to develop higher resistance to NNRTIs. The risk was cut in half, almost12 percent for the test group, and 25 percent for the control group.
However, there were some serious side effects including postpartum anaemia for mothers, and pneumonia for the infants -- in both groups. Though none of the side effect was caused by the new drug mixture of medicines, researchers claim.
The research was carried out by Benjamin Chi of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia and University of Birmingham in Alabama.
