There’s at all times a risk of HIV-positive moms passing the infection to their children. But a recent study has found that common antiviral drugs can almost completely stop this transmission.
The study, published within the journal The Lancet HIV, was conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. The study showed there was lower than a 2% probability of a mother on antiviral treatment passing on the HIV infection to her children.
The study gained more importance because it was able to cut back transmission rates even in a low-income country with a high HIV incidence resembling Tanzania.
“HIV transmission from mother to child can in principle be stopped completely with modern antiviral drugs. But to this point it has not been demonstrated in low-income countries in Africa with a high incidence of HIV infection,” first writer, Goodluck Willey Lyatuu, physician and postdoctoral researcher on the Department of Global Public Health at Karolinska Institutet, said, reported MedicalXpress.
The findings provide a shot within the arm for the World Health Organization’s goal of completely stopping the transmission of HIV infection from mother to child.
UNAIDS, a UN organization, says that the possibilities of youngsters born to HIV-positive moms in Tanzania, as a result of infection within the womb, during childbirth, or via breast milk, is 11%. The brand new study lowers the estimate significantly.
The researchers followed greater than 13,000 HIV-positive, pregnant women, in one in every of Africa’s largest cities, Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania. These women were on antiviral treatment as a part of maternity care between 2015 and 2017.
The ladies and the kids were followed for 18 months after birth, a time when many of the moms had stopped breastfeeding. Surprisingly, only 159 children were found to be infected with the virus.
Factoring within the margin error, this roughly translates to a risk of only one.4%.
“It’s one in every of the biggest cohort studies published from Africa on the danger of HIV transmission from mother to child where the newborn is followed until the top of the breastfeeding period,” co-author, Anna Mia Ekström, clinical professor on the Department of Global Public Health at Karolinska Institutet, said, in response to the outlet.
The chance of infection was not evenly distributed. It was greater than double in women who received treatment late in pregnancy or were at advanced stages of HIV. In the identical way, the danger of infection was found to be just 0.9% in women who had already received the treatment once they became pregnant.
While the general probabilities of infection were found to be minimal, Anna Mia Ekström warned that “it continues to be necessary to enhance early HIV diagnosis, optimize follow-up measures, and offer specialist support to young moms.”