Outwitting & Outwaiting ARV Resistance

In the best health news of the year (so far!), a new New England Journal of Medicine study has found that delaying the start of a nevirapine-based antiretroviral therapy by six months can prevent the development of drug resistance in HIV-positive women who took single-dose nevirapine during labor to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus. (See the Harvard and NIH press releases and coverage in the NY Times and Boston Globe for more details.) This exciting finding makes for a nice complement to the malaria ACT subsidy proposal and research on the re-emerging effectiveness of chloroquine as part of a new resistance dialogue focusing on policy recommendations to make existing drugs last longer and not just blindly relying on our ability to develop new ones.