Yesterday (which is still today from Chicago west to the Aleutians) was World AIDS Day. I marked it a week late last year, when I posted AIDS: The pandemic in our midst. This year, I'm observing it along with the western two-thirds of North America and all of the eastern Pacific, so I'm not completely tardy.
Like last year, I'm sharing the news stories from Overnight News Digests, this time going back to The Archdruid on Ebola and other epidemic news, the last time I mentioned the disease. I begin with two stories about in utero HIV transmission.
SUNY Stony Brook: Dr. Sharon Nachman Leads Network Involving NIH-Sponsored Study that Identifies Superior Drug Regimen for Preventing Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission
Stony Brook, NY – November 24, 2014 – The results of an international clinical trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found that taking a three-drug regimen during pregnancy prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission more effectively than taking a single drug during pregnancy, another during labor, and two more after giving birth.Wayne State University: Research shows anti-HIV medicines can cause damage to fetal hearts
“This study will help us to understand the safety and toxicity of these specific regimens in HIV positive pregnant women and their children,” said Dr. Nachman, Associate Dean of Research and Professor of Pediatrics at Stony Brook Medicine, and the Principal Investigator of the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) network, which conducts the PROMISE (Promoting Maternal Infant Survival Everywhere) Study. “As these women and children are followed, we will learn more about the long-term issues that may arise from these medications.”
Just-published findings in the journal AIDS raise concern about potential long-term harmful impact of “antiretroviral therapy” on in-utero infants whose mothers are HIV-positive, but who are not infected with HIV themselves.
November 19, 2014
DETROIT, Mich., Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2014 – A study by a Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Detroit Medical Center research team is shedding new light on the troubling question of whether the drugs often given to HIV-positive pregnant women can cause significant long-term heart problems for the non-HIV-infected babies they carry.Follow over the jump for more stories from the past three months in reverse chronological order.
The study recently published in the journal AIDS shows that while the HIV medications have been successful in helping to prevent the transmission of the virus from mother to infant, they are associated with persistently impaired development of heart muscle and reduced heart performance in non-HIV-infected children whose mothers received the medicines years earlier.
“What our study indicates is that there’s potentially a long-term price to be paid for protecting the children of HIV-infected mothers from the virus,” said Steven Lipshultz, M.D., pediatrician-in-chief at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan and chair of pediatrics for the Wayne State University School of Medicine. Dr. Lipshultz is a specialist in the study of long-term toxic cardiac effects among children affected by cancer and HIV drug therapies.
