Evaluating Strategies to Reduce Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Infection in Resource-Limited Countries

The purpose of this study was to examine, in an integrated and comprehensive fashion, three critical questions currently facing HIV-infected pregnant and postpartum women and their infants: 1. What is the optimal intervention for the prevention of antepartum and intrapartum transmission of HIV? 2. What is the optimal intervention for the prevention of postpartum transmission in breastfeeding (BF) infants? 3. What is the optimal intervention for the preservation of maternal health after the risk period for prevention of mother-to-child-transmission ends (either at delivery or cessation of BF)? The overall PROMISE protocol had three separate interventional components to address each of these three questions and was conducted at locations in Africa and other parts of the world. Due to variations in the standard of care for HIV-infected pregnant and postpartum women and their infants at different sites, not all of these questions were relevant. Therefore, two separate versions of the PROMISE protocol were developed, each containing only the relevant components. The 1077BF protocol was used at sites where the standard method of infant feeding was breastfeeding, whereas the 1077FF protocol was used at sites where the standard method of infant feeding was formula feeding. The analyses were collapsed across the two protocol versions, and therefore the summaries contain the results of the 1077BF and/or the 1077FF protocols.