By Deborah L. Shelton AMNews Staff U ntil just a few years ago, a woman who was pregnant and HIV-infected could only hope that she'd beat the odds and not transmit the virus to her baby.
Medicine now has far more to offer than hope.
New treatments are greatly improving the health outcomes of both infected mothers and their offspring. They're getting better. And mostly they've been given their lives back. In 1994, data from the landmark AIDS Clinical Trial Group 076 showed that AZT reduced perinatal HIV transmission by two-thirds when taken by the woman during pregnancy, labor and delivery, and when given to the baby during the first six weeks of life. This summer, researchers reported that elective cesarean sections performed before the onset of labor can further reduce HIV transmission.