allAfrica.com -- Nigeria: HIV Risk Increases With Prolonged Breastfeeding - Study HIV Risk Increases With Prolonged Breastfeeding - Study

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Vanguard (Lagos)
November 19, 2002
Posted to the web November 19, 2002

Sola Ogundipe


HIV-positive nursing mothers and their infants who are placed on anti-retroviral drugs for a short time can produce levels of mother-to-child HIV transmission as low as six per cent, but about 20 per cent of such infants are eventually infected if breastfed over a prolonged length of time.

This was the outcome of a randomized trial conducted among 1,797 pregnant women living with HIV in Tanzania, South Africa, and Uganda. In the trial, published in Lancet, three oral drug regimens using zidovudine and lamivudine to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission (MTCT) were compared. One group of women received the two common antiretroviral drugs before, during, and after delivery. The second group received the regimen during an after delivery. Infants of mothers in these first two groups also received the drugs, a third group of women received the drugs only after delivery and a fourth group was given a placebo.