AIDS
Conference Calls For Child-Specific HIV Drugs
Story by
Michael Perry
Edited by GEKA - ( GDM )
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The world's biggest AIDS
conference closed on Wednesday with a call for the development of
child-specific drugs to ensure millions of HIV-infected children not
only survive to adulthood, but also live without damaging side effects
from their treatment.
"We must
do more to protect our future, finding better ways to treat the
youngest among us...," said International AIDS Society (IAS) President
Dr Pedro Cahn.
An
estimated 2.3 million children are HIV
infected, with around 600,000 new infections each year. Without
treatment half of all babies infected will die before their second
birthday.
Yet only
15 percent of children who need treatment are currently receiving
antiretroviral drugs, the IAS conference in Sydney was told on
Wednesday.
"The goal
of treatment in children must be balanced between halting the effects
of the HIV disease and the long-term effects of antiretroviral on a
developing child," said Dr Annette Sohn from the Division of Paediatric
Infectious Diseases at the University of California in San
Francisco.
Sohn said
HIV-infected children on antiretrovirals risk HIV encephalopathy, where
the brain swells and damages tissues over time, reduced neurocognitive
development and lower bone density.
The
conference was told that early treatment of children increased survival
rates, but Sohn said some children who have been on early treatment
have been forced onto second and third line drugs as the virus quickly
builds resistance.
"It's
clear that response to treatment is better when children are started
before they develop severe immune deficiency," she said. "What is the
future for those children already on second line drugs at the age of 5?"
ADULT-DESIGNED
DRUGS
Those
lucky enough to receive antiretroviral treatment are usually
administered adult-designed drugs, cut into smaller and sometimes
inaccurate doses which may mean treatment failure.
"Most of
the world has been forced to split adult tablets into child size
pieces. However splitting tablets into anything less than one half
risks under or over dosing," said Sohn.
"It means
children that require smaller sized pieces may be under dosed, leading
to inadequate drug levels and risk of treatment failure."
Sohn said
there was a need for generic paediatric drugs which would be cheaply
shipped, stored and administered.
"We still
need more paediatric antiretroviral formulations. Children clearly need
a wider range of drugs in dual and triple combinations," she said.
The United
Nations says close to 40 million people are infected with the
AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000
people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005.
In June,
world powers at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany
set a target of providing AIDS drugs over the next few years to
approximately 5 million people.
The
three-day IAS conference, attended by 5,000 delegates from more than
130 countries, urged governments to allocate 10 percent of HIV funding
to research, both medical and operational, to ensure treatment reached
those in the world's poorest nations.
"HIV
presents one of the greatest and most complex scientific challenges of
our time," said Professor David Cooper, co-chair of the 2007 IAS
conference.
"Confronting
this challenge will require sustained political will and increased
resources dedicated to AIDS research."
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