Reducing vertical transmission of HIV in the UK

BMJ 1999;319:1211-1212 ( 6 November )

Editorials

Reducing vertical transmission of HIV in the UK

At last the UK is getting serious about reducing mother to child transmission

Papers pp 1227 , 1230

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For five years we have known that administering zidovudine to HIV infected women during pregnancy and in labour, and to theneonate for the first 6 weeks of life, greatly reduces motherto child transmission of HIV.¹ This intervention, togetherwith delivery by caesarean section and avoiding breast feeding,has reduced the risk of transmission from over 20% to well under5%.² In the United States, where antiretroviral therapy iswidely used to reduce perinatal transmission, the incidence ofAIDS in infants, a sensitive indicator of mother to child transmission,has fallen by 80%.³ In the United Kingdom, although routineantenatal testing for HIV infection has officially been recommendedfor high prevalence areas since 1994, most maternal HIV infectionsremain undetected.⁴ Thus the number of infants presenting withAIDS in the UK has not declined, as it has in other European countries,and in 1997 was higher than in France, Italy, or . . . [Full text of this article]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

de Zulueta, P., Boulton, M. (2007). Routine antenatal HIV testing: the responses and perceptions of pregnant women and the viability of informed consent. A qualitative study. J. Med. Ethics 33: 329-336 [Abstract] [Full text]

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