Thousands of babies are born with HIV every day. Worse, the virus is even more violent in children than it is in adults. Yet while adults with HIV are often given combinations of strong drugs, there is less data on prescribing similar multidrug treatments to newborns. And while guidelines for adults recommend waiting to start drugs until symptoms appear, the same approach might not work for children.

What they wanted to know: Which combination of drugs would be the most effective treatment for babies with HIV, and when should treatment start?

What they did: Fifty-two HIV-infected children between 2 weeks and 24 months old were split into three groups, each receiving a different combination of drugs. All three groups were also divided into two age categories, one younger (3 months or under) and one older (over 3 months). Researchers regularly administered the drugs and monitored the subjects for nearly four years.

What they found: The children receiving the drug combination stavudine, lamiduvine, nevirapine, and nelfinavir responded best; that group was much more likely than the other two treatment groups to have low levels of HIV in their blood. Further, the babies who were first given therapy when they were younger generally had lower levels of HIV than those children who started therapy later on.

What it means to you: These discoveries may be an important step in developing better treatments for HIV's youngest victims.

Caveats: The study only pitted combination-drug treatments against one another. Also, patients weren't assigned to treatments randomly.

Find out more: American Academy of Family Physicians: http://www.aafp.org/

Read the article: Luzuriaga, K., et al. "A Trial of Three Antiretroviral Regimens in HIV-1-Infected Children." New England Journal of Medicine. June 2004, Vol. 350, No. 24, pp. 2471–80.