Maternal or Infant Antiretroviral Drugs to Reduce HIV-1 Transmission

To the Editor: The article by Chasela et al. (June 17 issue) 1 is an important contribution to the field of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), since it shows that the use of either a maternal antiretroviral regimen or infant nevirapine for 28 weeks markedly reduced HIV-1 transmission during breast-feeding. Although the study was not designed to compare the two interventions, the authors suggest that infant nevirapine may be the regimen of choice for reasons of cost, safety, and efficacy. However, in this study, all women who had previously received antiretroviral drugs were excluded, . . .