Deaths among children infected with HIV in Africa could be almost halved if all those with symptoms were put on a simple, cheap and readily available antibiotic, new research has established.
The positive results of a study of children in Zambia, carried out by the British Medical Research Council (MRC) and funded by the Department for International Development, are a rare breath of hope in the pandemic.
While the antibiotic, called co-trimoxazole, will not prevent children eventually developing Aids, it could give many of them extra years of healthy life before they need the powerful and toxic anti-retroviral drugs that suppress HIV in the blood.
”This is a breakthrough in medical research which can help to save children’s lives all over the world,” Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, said on Thursday.
”Each day as many as 1 300 children die from HIV and Aids-related illnesses globally. The trial … has shown how this widely available, affordable antibiotic drug can almost halve child deaths by warding off potentially fatal illnesses in children whose immune systems are weakened because of HIV.”
The results of the trial, published in this week’s Lancet medical journal, have persuaded the World Health Organisation and Unicef to change their policies and recommend the use of co-trimoxazole in all children with HIV.
In the study, 541 children aged between one and 14 were given the antibiotic or a placebo. The trial was stopped early when it became clear that substantially fewer children on the antibiotic were dying. After 19 months, 74 (28%) children on co-trimoxazole had died, compared with 112 (42%) of those on the placebo.
All those who took part are now taking co-trimoxazole.
People infected with HIV usually die of the infections that the body cannot fight off because the virus has destroyed their immune system. The antibiotic appears to keep the infections at bay.
Di Gibb of the MRC, who led the trial, said the drug was cheap and widely available — the researchers had got their supplies from a local generics company in Lusaka.
”It could be dispensed right down at the grassroots level,” Dr Gibb said. ”Any child we think has HIV and has symptoms should go on it.”
She said the children suffered no ill-effects from the antibiotic. ”I think they could take it really for quite a long time.” – Guardian Unlimited Â