Important note: Information in this article was accurate in March 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, March 20, 2000
Prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports
Recently -concluded clinical trials in Thailand have demonstrated that a short course of zidovudine therapy administered to HIV infected women during late pregnancy and labor can substantially reduce the likelihood of perinatal transmission of HIV.
"This regimen is both less expensive and less effective than the full course of therapy recommended for use in the United States by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS)," S.D. Pinkerton and colleagues wrote ("Incremental cost-effectiveness of two zidovudine regimens to prevent perinatal HIV transmission in the United States," Prev Med 2000 Jan;30(1):64-9.
The objective of the current study was to estimate the incremental cost-effectiveness of the full-course zidovudine regimen in comparison to the short-course regimen that was tested in Thailand and to determine conditions under which the PHS-recommended regimen produces a net savings in societal resource utilization, relative to the shorter regimen.
Pinkerton et al. used standard methods of incremental cost-effectiveness analysis and derived cost and effectiveness estimates from published studies. The main outcome measure was the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, which was the additional cost per additional case of perinatal HIV infection averted by the full course of therapy.
The researchers found that full-course zidovudine therapy costs an additional $21,337 per additional case of HIV infection averted, relative to the shorter regimen; this is much less than the cost of treating a case of pediatric HIV infection.
"Economic and clinical findings both favor full-course zidovudine therapy over short-course therapy to prevent perinatal transmission of HIV in the United States," Pinkerton et al. wrote.
The corresponding author for this study is S.D. Pinkerton, Medical College of Wisconsin, Ctr AIDS Intervent Res, Dept Psychiat & Behav Med, 2071 N Summit Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
Key points reported in this study are:
This article was prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports.
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