World Health Organization changes HIV treatments for mothers, newborns

Articles recently featured in the New England Journal of Medicine and support from the National Institutes of Health contributed to updates of treatment protocols for HIV-positive women and children. These changes were made after receiving approval by the World Health Organization

The improvements will benefit mothers receiving single doses of antiretroviral drug nevirapine to prevent HIV transmission to their infants, and newborns given the same treatment to stave off the virus. This is because studies have shown that the medication wouldn't be as effective if used after the children are born.

Also, if women with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) don't receive the treatment properly, their bodies can become resistant to the drug. However, the misuse of the therapy would affect the children, but their resistance to it would decrease they got older.

Newborns that did become infected with HIV, and still received the treatment, were found to improve if the antiretroviral drug nevirapine also included ritonavir-boosted lopinavir, another type of antiretroiral drug.

Advancements in preventing mother-to-infant transmission of this virus may help lower the number of cases that are still on the rise across the country. For instance, if a HIV-positive woman gives birth, but isn't being treated for the STD, there is 25 percent chance her child will become infected, according to the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California in San Francisco.