The winter break is a great opportunity to spend time in the lab with my students. One of the things we do, is read papers. Last week, we spent a morning reading the following paper:
The paper shows that antiretroviral drugs taken by an HIV-infected mother help prevent transmission to the baby through breastfeeding. The reported rates of HIV infection of the infants during breastfeeding were less than half the previously reported rates from untreated women.
After everyone read the paper, and we all discussed it together, two students worked together to write an abstract and three students worked together to draw an abstract. Here are the results:
Abstract (by Kadie and Melissa)
The Kisumu Breastfeeding Study was a single-arm trial conducted with 522 HIV–infected pregnant women who took a triple antiretroviral regimen from 34 weeks of pregnancy to 6 months after delivery. The triple-ARV regimen consisted of zidovudine and lamivudine and either nevirapine or the protease inhibitor nelfinavir. The purpose of the study was to investigate how various ARV regimens given to mother and/or their infants affect mother to child transmission of HIV.
Data collected showed that between 0 and 24 months, the cumulative HIV transmission rate rose from 2.5% to 7.0%. The cumulative HIV transmission or death rate was 15.7%. Three percent of babies born to mothers with a low viral load were HIV-positive compared to 8.7% of babies born to mothers with a high viral load. Similarly, 8.4% of babies born to mothers with low baseline CD4 cell counts were HIV positive compared to 4.1% of babies born to mothers with high baseline CD4 cell counts. Although these findings are limited by the single-arm design, this study supports the idea that a simple triple-ARV regimen given to HIV-positive pregnant women regardless of their baseline CD4 cell count can reduce MTCT during pregnancy and breastfeeding in a resource-limited setting.
Graphical abstract (by Olivia, Patricia and Dasha)
Being A Better Scientist 
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