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In Sub-Saharan Africa, it can take
up to three months for mothers to know if they have passed HIV to their babies,
as the tests have to be sent off to a lab. Meanwhile, infected infants are not
receiving treatment. To address this problem, researchers at Northwestern
University have created a new device targeted specifically for testing infants
in rural Africa. It will provide results in less than an hour. The test was
designed by David Kelso, a professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern
with the help of Abbott Laboratories, Quidel Corp., and others.
The device is the size of a
single-slice toaster and is battery powered. It can be used by less experienced
nurses and community health workers and should cost less than $500. The
researchers aim for the cost of each test to be less than $10, and to
distribute the equipment to as many rural public health clinics as possible.
The intention is that mothers of HIV-infected infants should leave the clinic
with a month’s supply of antiretroviral drugs for the child.
To determine whether the new test
will result in significantly more HIV-positive infants receiving treatment, the
researchers plan a clinical trial to begin early next year in Mozambique. The
device will be evaluated in five clinics in the capital Maputo, and later
expand to rural settings, where researchers will measure accuracy of the test,
how availability affects the number of infants tested, and how many of the tested
HIV-positive infants receive treatment. Results from first round trials in
South Africa were promising. Of 634 infants tested, the device was 99.4 percent
specific, and 95 percent sensitive.
The research took 10 years and was
funded through a $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Northwestern has created a nonprofit foundation to manufacture and distribute
the test. The nonprofit will outsource manufacturing and set up distribution
channels and manage sales and inventory.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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