Public Health Service (US) releases updated guidelines for treatment of HIV positive pregnant women

New recommendations address anti-HIV therapy and pregnancy outcomes, and PI- and NRTI-related toxicities.

The newly released version (February 25, 2000) of the ‘U.S. Public Health Service Task Force Recommendations for the Use of Antiretroviral Drugs in Pregnant Women Infected with HIV-1 for Maternal Health and for Reducing Perinatal HIV-1 Transmission in the United States’ (The Living Document) is available through the web site of ATIS (AIDS/HIV Treatment Information Service).

This is the first time these guidelines have been updated as a ‘Living Document’ since their publication in the MMWR in 1998. New sections of the document include combination antiretroviral therapy and pregnancy outcomes, protease inhibitor therapy and hyperglycaemia, and mitochondrial toxicity and nucleoside analogue drugs. Additional changes discuss international antiretroviral prophylaxis clinical trials as well as provide a new clinical scenario (#3) regarding recommendations for handling HIV-infected women in labour who have had no prior therapy. These and other changes are highlighted in the PDF and HTML documents to make it easier to identify changes from the previous version (January 30, 1998).