New ACTG 076 Analysis Emphasized Importance of Offering AZT Therapy to All HIV-Infected Pregnant Women

NIH NEWS RELEASE
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE Greg Folkers
Wednesday, Nov. 27, 1996 [phone]
5:00 p.m. Eastern Time [email protected]
New ACTG 076 Analysis Emphasizes Importance of Offering AZT Therapy
to All HIV-lnfected Pregnant Women
Transmission of HIV from a pregnant woman to her infant can occur when a woman has
little or no detectable HIV in her blood and a relatively intact immune system, according to a
new report by researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
However, in the study a specific regimen of the drug zidovudine (AZT) reduced the risk
of perinatal transmission, regardless of a woman's viral load or CD4+ T cell count. Therefore,
researchers urge caregivers to offer AZT therapy to all pregnant HIV-infected women,
regardless of their stage of disease.
"HIV transmission to the infant is most likely to occur when a woman has large
quantities of virus in her bloodstream, but there appears to be no absolute threshold of
maternal viral load below which HIV is not transmitted from mother to infant, nor a 'safe'
maternal CD4+ T cell level above which transmission never occurs," comments Anthony S.
Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
"These new data underscore the importance of following the Public Health Service
recommendations to offer therapy to all HIV-infected women and their babies, including women
who have high CD4+ T cell counts and those with low viral load," says Jack Killen, M.D.,
director of NIAID's Division of AIDS.
Rhoda S. Sperling, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive
science at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and her colleagues report the new
findings in the Nov. 28 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers found that the reduction in perinatal transmission after AZT treatment
could only partially be explained by the drug's effect of reducing HIV in a mother's bloodstream.
"The benefits of AZT in reducing p~rinatal transmission appear to be due in part to

mechanisms other than decreasing the amount of HIV in a woman's plasma," says Dr. Sperling.
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