An antiretroviral drug already in widespread use in the developing world to prevent the transmission of HIV from infected mothers to their newborns during childbirth has also been found to substantially cut the risk of subsequent HIV transmission during breast-feeding. In a study presented Feb. 4 at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, an international team of AIDS experts reports that nevirapine given once daily to breast-feeding infants from 8 to 42 days old decreased by almost half the rate of HIV transmission via breast-feeding at 6 weeks of age. The decrease occurred in comparison to a single dose of nevirapine given to infants at birth, the current standard of care.
