WASHINGTON, May 11 (AFP) - HIV-infected babies treated with Antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the first two months after birth, show less HIV progression and improved survival rates, researchers reported Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Researchers from California's Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital found that HIV-infected infants treated with one or two ART drugs within two months of birth were less likely to develop AIDS by their third birthday than were infants who were three or four months old when treatment was initiated.
Infants who received a combination of three ART drugs did even better, the researchers said. "There is a significant difference in the likelihood of disease progression (with earlier treatment), even thought there is only about a month separating the initiation of therapy in the two groups," said the study's senior author Yvonne Maldonado.
Of the 205 HIV-positive infants who were included in the study from 1988 to 2001, 20-30 percent who received no ART treatment developed AIDS within four months. Those treated with one or two ART drugs developed AIDS at around age six -- 55 percent of the children of both groups have died.
None of the 23 infants who were treated with three ART drugs in the first two months of their lives showed advanced symptoms of AIDS such as pneumonia or died before the age of three, the researchers said.
Worldwide, approximately 2.5 million children are infected with HIV, and approximately 1,700 new perinatal infections occur daily, according to background information provided by the researchers.
In the United States, more than 9,300 HIV-infected children younger than 13 years have progressed to AIDS as of December 2003, the report added.
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