Balancing the Upside and Downside of Antiretroviral Therapy in Children
- Ram Yogev, MD
- Author Affiliations: Division of Infectious Diseases, Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, Ill.
- Corresponding Author: Ram Yogev, MD, Division of Infectious Diseases, Children’@s Memorial Hospital, 2300 Children’s Plaza, Box 155, Chicago, IL 60614-3394 (ryogev{at}childrensmemorial.org).
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
In the late 1980s part of my routine, as the director of a pediatric human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS clinic, was to attend funerals of my patients, children who succumbed to this disease. Now I am attending their graduations from high school and some of my patients are going to college. This anecdotal observation about the dramatic impact of highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) on the outcome of HIV infection in children is substantiated by the results reported by Berk and colleagues1 in this issue of JAMA, which demonstrate that decreased HIV progression and improved survival of infected children are associated with early and more advanced antiretroviral therapy (ART).
From the beginning, antiretroviral drugs were not as readily available to children as they were to adults. Some of the reasons included lack of appropriate formulations, poor palatability, limited or no pharmacokinetic data in children, and the smaller market. As …
