New evidence shows that drug-resistant virus passed from mother-to-child can quickly establish itself in infants?CD4+ T cells where it can hide for years, likely limiting their options for future treatment. The study is published in the May 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online.Mother-to-child transmission of HIV is an important factor in the AIDS pandemic, although important strides have been made in limiting transmission with antiviral drug therapies before, during, and following birth. In the last few decades the rate of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the United States has been reduced from 25 percent to its current rate of less than 2 percent. However, the transmission of drug-resistant strains of HIV from mother to child is still a problem, and much is unknown concerning how such transmission affects the responses of infants to various drug treatments. >>> Discuss This Story
