Drug resistance is uncommon in pregnant women with low viral loads taking zidovudine monotherapy to prevent perinatal HIV transmission.

Zidovudine monotherapy is used to reduce perinatal HIV transmission in women with low viral loads. There are few data on the risk of drug resistance in this select cohort of women. We determined the prevalence of newly acquired mutations conferring reduced sensitivity to zidovudine after exposure during pregnancy, and found that the development of mutations was uncommon and was restricted to women treated before 1998 who had higher baseline viral loads than those currently recommended monotherapy.

Antiretroviral drug resistance among HIV-1 infected children failing treatment.

High levels of HIV-1 replication occur following perinatal infection and antiretroviral drugs may not fully suppress viral load during the early years of childhood. Adherence to treatment may also be difficult among children. These two factors will contribute to development of drug resistance but limited paediatric data are available.

Rubella virus and chronic joint disease: is there an association?

Synovial fluid samples and/or biopsies from 79 patients with various chronic inflammatory joint diseases or traumatic joint injury were tested for rubella virus (RV) in order to confirm or refute results from other studies that suggested RV as a cause of chronic inflammatory joint disease. Sixty-eight of the 72 patients tested had RV antibodies. RV RNA was detected by reverse transcription-PCR in the synovial fluid cells from two patients.