The World Health Organization is reviewing its 2006 guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs by HIV-positive pregnant and breastfeeding women because of new evidence that prolonged use can cut the risk of mother-to-child transmission, reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE56K6XB20090721″ target=_new>Reuters reports. Current guidelines recommend that these women receive a short-course antiretroviral regimen. However, a new study released at an international AIDS conference on Wednesday shows that a stronger regimen over a prolonged period significantly lowers the risk of mother-to-child transmission.

The study examined 824 pregnant women in Burkina Faso, Kenya and South Africa who received either the standard antiretroviral regimen or a combination of three antiretrovirals. The combination regimen was administered during the last trimester and for a maximum of six months during breastfeeding, according to study leader Tim Farley of WHO’s Department of Reproductive Health. Farley said women who received the combination regimen during pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding had a 42% lower risk of transmitting HIV to their infants than women given the standard course.

Farley added, “The results of this study show an almost twofold reduction in the risk of HIV transmission during the breastfeeding period and also [show] there is no short-term toxicity” to the women or their infants. He said that participants will be monitored for any long-term health effects. WHO is expected to release the updated recommendations by the end of the year (Roelf, Reuters, 7/21).

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Reuters Examines Upcoming HIV Prevention Trial In Africa

Nature study published on Thursday overturns a “decade-old consensus that chimpanzees cannot fall ill as a result of infection with a virus similar to HIV,” Nature News reports. “The results suggest that it will not be possible to find the key to HIV immunity in the chimpanzee genome, as scientists had hoped,” writes Nature News, adding that it does set “the stage for researchers to gain insight into how HIV and SIV cause disease in their hosts by studying the responses of different primates to the viruses” (Hayden, 7/22).

IRIN Examines Aid, Climate Partnerships

IRIN examines new partnerships between aid agencies and meteorological services that aim to prevent and respond to disasters in West Africa. Maarten van Aalst, associate director of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent regional climate centre in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, said, “The question is not why meteorological services and humanitarian organizations are talking to each other today, but why they have not been talking for one-and-a-half centuries.” The article includes examples of collaboration and analyzes the barriers to partnership (7/22).

Malawi’s Daily Times Examines Obstetric Fistula

The Daily Times examines obstetric fistula in Malawi. The article includes details about women who have dealt with the childbirth complication, which is treatable. It also describes a local education program that aims to teach women about fistulas and improve maternal health (Kasawala, 7/22).

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The Alabama Department of Corrections has expanded to all inmates a re-entry program that provides newly released inmates with HIV/AIDS “with information on obtaining licenses [and] other documents and preparing for returning to life outside prison,” the AP/USA Today/Montgomery Advertiser reports (Hunter, 7/22). “In the past, prisoners at the end of their sentences were sent back into the free world with minimal assistance, not the in-depth services the inmates with HIV and AIDS had received,” according to AP/WZTV.com. The expanded Alabama Prison Initiative will allow all inmates to enroll in classes that provide them with “practical tips” and guidance “that will hopefully help keep them from returning,” the AP/WZTV.com reports (7/22). AIDS Alabama CEO Kathie Hiers said, “We’ve seen it help so much in the HIV community. They’re smart to take a good program and expand it” (Hunter, 7/22).

This information was reprinted from dailyreports.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily U.S. HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at dailyreports.kff.org.

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