The United States Department of Health and Human Services has released an updated version of its “Guidelines for the Use of Antiretroviral Agents in Pediatric HIV Infection.”

The guidelines contain updated recommendations in several areas, including diagnosis of HIV in infants, start of antiretroviral therapy, selection of antiretrovirals, and adherence to antiretroviral therapy in children and teenagers.

The guidelines now also include a rating system to indicate the strength of each recommendation, and formatting changes have been implemented to improve readability. For example, a section on drug side effects in…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released new guidelines last week regarding treatment for pregnant HIV-positive women and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

The guidelines include updates on preferred regimens for prevention of HIV transmission during pregnancy.

According to the report, fewer than 200 children are now born with HIV in the United States each year, as a result of efforts to limit mother-to-child transmission.

Transmission of HIV from a pregnant woman to her baby can occur during pregnancy, labor, or while breastfeeding after the baby is born. To…

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week announced the addition of updated drug interaction information to the prescribing information of all currently approved HIV protease inhibitors.

Protease inhibitors are a class of antiretroviral drugs that prevent HIV from replicating by blocking a necessary protein called protease.

Drugs in this class include Aptivus (tipranavir), Crixivan (indinavir), Invirase (saquinavir mesylate), Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir), Lexiva (fosamprenavir), Norvir (ritonavir), Prezista (darunavir), Reyataz (atazanavir), and Viracept (nelfinavir).

Although some of the drug interactions had been known for specific protease inhibitors, the added information…

The Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) added warnings of increased risk of heart attack and dyslipidemia (elevated cholesterol and lipid levels) to the prescribing information for Lexiva (fosamprenavir), an anti-HIV drug.

GSK, the drug’s manufacturer, has updated existing prescribing information to include the potential for Lexiva to increase cholesterol levels, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks.

GSK recommends testing triglycerides and cholesterol levels in patients, both initially and at set intervals throughout the course of therapy.

Evidence for this increased risk comes from…