[New therapy reduces AIDS passed to fetuses and costs less]

The AIDS clinical group protocol of zidovudine (AZT) prophylaxis regimen for HIV-1-infected pregnant women and their babies has been associated with a decrease in vertical HIV-1 transmission in non-breastfeeding women in developmental countries. However, scientists furthermore compared the safety and efficacy of short-course nevirapine or AZT during labour and the first week of life. In an advancement that promises to significantly reduce the incidence of AIDS in children in developing countries, scientists have found a simple new way with nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus that also is less costly and markedly more effective than the standard therapy with AZT in the third world. The more practical therapy comes from substituting one marketed drug, nevirapine, for the standard drug, AZT. The cost for the two doses of nevirapine was $4, compared with $268 for AZT regimen now used in developing countries and $815 for the much longer and more complicated course used in the U.S. and other developing countries. It is proposed that wide-scale use of nevirapine in developing countries could potentially prevent 300,000 to 400,000 newborns each year from beginning life infected with HIV.