FOR HIV-positive women in poor countries it can be a life-saving short cut: a one-off treatment with the anti-retroviral drug nevirapine in late pregnancy can stop their babies being infected with HIV during birth. Now it seems there is a major downside.
Previous studies had suggested that any nevirapine-resistant HIV arising as a result of the treatment disappeared from the mother’s body shortly after birth. However, when Sarah Palmer and colleagues at the National Institutes of ÎçÒ¹¸£Àû1000¼¯ºÏ in Frederick, Maryland, looked more carefully for specific nevirapine-resistance mutations in HIV from women given the treatment in Soweto, South Africa, they found…
