Guidelines for studying pregnancy and HIV

Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection — yet there hasn’t been much study of how medication could help prevent them from getting the disease. They’ve been blocked from pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trials, studies on new antiretroviral therapies, and for drugs that treat tuberculosis and malaria — two of the deadliest co-infections with HIV.

An NIH-funded study on pregnant women and HIV just released ethics guidance on how best to treat this patient population. It urges the importance of why these women should not be excluded from clinical study, and why they should get equal access to life-saving experimental drugs.

“As the global HIV research community continues to work together to end HIV and address its deadly co-infections, it is imperative to ensure equitable attention to a population so centrally affected by these diseases,” the paper says. “Pregnant women and the children they bear deserve nothing less.”