ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200036
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
In a study of 30 HIV-positive pregnant women, AIDS researchers with the New York state Health Department have identified a level of HIV in the blood that may be used to predict the risk an infected woman has of passing the deadly virus on to her newborn.
Although still experimental, the highly sophisticated test used to measure the levels of virus in the blood could in the next several years help infected women ``make informed decisions about their pregnancy,'' said one of the clinical researchers, Dr. Sharon Nachman, director of the pediatric AIDS unit at State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The study also provides a ``scientific rationale'' for lowering the level of the virus in the blood by using drugs such as AZT, the antiviral agent zidovudine, said Dr. Barbara Weiser of the Wadsworth Center, part of the New York state Department of Health. Weiser was one of three principal investigators in the state-sponsored study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the study, the researchers found that those women who had 50,000 viruses or less in the blood had only a 3 percent risk of transmitting the human immunodeficiency virus to their babies. Those women who had levels higher than 50,000 had a 75 percent chance of transmission, the researchers found.
About two-thirds of the women in the study had levels below 50,000. This was ``compatible'' with studies of viral levels in other infected people, the researchers said. It also helps to explain why only 25 percent of infected mothers pass the virus to their children, they said.
Dr. Rhoda Sperling, one of the principal investigators in a previous trial, cautioned that the study was preliminary. ``I wouldn't hang my hat on 30 people,'' she said.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB