Raleigh News & Observer: Drugs keep babies from getting HIV
June 19, 2010
The Raleigh News & Observer
quotes Foundation Vice President of Research Dr. Laura Guay about the landmark BAN Study, which examines how to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV through breastmilk.
"When a baby dies in a hospital in Malawi, Africa, you can hear everything. Family members, known as guardians, hurl their bodies against the ground, beating the floor with their fists and uttering heart-wrenching sobs. Dr. Charles van der Horst knows. The UNC-Chapel Hill professor of medicine spends three months each year in Africa, researching the transmission of HIV, the deadly virus that causes AIDS, to infants. He's also the senior author of a study that details two therapies that help shield babies from contracting HIV from breast milk. Published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study shows that giving either a triple drug cocktail of HIV-fighters called antiretrovirals to mothers or a single antiretroviral to suckling infants greatly reduces the risk of transmission."
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