WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Studies find a combination of HIV drugs could better protect babies from contracting the AIDS virus from mothers in Africa.

    Scientists add Combivir to nevirapine, a cheap and highly effective AIDS drug widely used to prevent mother-to-baby transmission in the Third World. The drug combinations are intended to work as an alternative to nevirapine, as up to two-thirds of women have become resistant to the drug.

    Combivir contains two HIV drugs called the AZT and 3TC. The drug combinations appear to have an extremely low rate of resistance.

    The findings were presented Thursday in Boston at the 12th Annual Retrovirus Conference, a meeting of international AIDS researchers.

    The drug combinations are considered relatively inexpensive, ata likely price of more than 30 US dollars a month in a poor country, compared with about four dollars for a single dose of nevirapine. However, some poor countries currently cannot even afford nevirapine.

    "For a minimum additional cost, we may get many benefits," saidDr. James McIntyre, an AIDS researcher in South Africa.

    In poor countries, nevirapine is usually given in single doses to infected pregnant women in labor and then to their newborns. This works to reduce the mother-to-baby transmission of the AIDS virus from about 35 percent to 12 percent.

    One of the African studies, conducted in Cote d'Ivoire, found nevirapine plus Combivir reduced transmission rates at four to sixweeks after birth to about 5 percent, the lowest ever reported in Africa. And only 1 percent of the mothers became resistant to nevirapine, and 8 percent to the 3TC.

    In the study, nevirapine plus Combivir were given to 329 women during pregnancy and for three days after birth. The newborns alsotook single-dose nevirapine and the AZT.

    Nearly 40 million people around the world are infected with HIV,65 percent of them living in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, the AIDS epidemic killed about 3 million people.

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