Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) therapy is safe for HIV-uninfected women breastfeeding their infants, according to a study in PLOS Medicine.
As PrEP becomes more widely used in heterosexual populations, an important consideration is its safety in infants who are breastfed by women taking the drugs, reported Kenneth Mugwanya, MBChB, PhD, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and his associates (PLOS Med. 2016 Sep 27. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002132).
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The purpose of this small, prospective short-term trialwas to quantify drug levels in maternal blood samples, breast milk, and infant blood samples to begin to understand if PrEP is safe for use in pregnant or breastfeeding women at high risk for contracting HIV.
Antiretroviral PrEP with 300 mg tenofovir disoproxil fumarate and 200 mg emtricitabine was administered to 50 HIV-uninfected breastfeeding mothers through daily directly observed therapy for 10 consecutive days and then discontinued thereafter. All mothers were African and resided in Kenya or Uganda. Median maternal age was 25 years; 48% of infants were younger than 12 weeks and 52% were between 13 and 24 weeks of age. Across the study cohort, the median daily frequency of breastfeeding was 15 times.
Maternal blood and breast milk samples were collected and analyzed for drug concentrations at days 7 and 10 of the study. Peak concentration samples, collected 1-2 hours after PrEP administration, and trough concentration levels, collected 23-24 hours after PrEP dose, were collected on day 7 and day 10. Infant blood samples were collected only once, on day 7.
In maternal blood samples, tenofovir was detected at concentrations consistent with steady-state use (median peak concentration, 152.0 ng/mL). In breast milk, tenofovir was present in significantly lower concentrations (3.2 ng/mL). Emtricitabine was also detected at concentrations consistent with steady-state use in maternal blood samples (median peak concentration, 267.5 ng/mL); however, unlike tenofovir, emtricitabine concentration in breast milk was similar to peak plasma concentrations (212.5 ng/mL). Tenofovir was undetectable in 46 of 49 (94%) infant plasma samples. For the three infants with detectable tenofovir, the plasma concentrations were 0.9, 0.9, and 17.4 ng/mL, corresponding body weights were 6.4, 5.8, and 6.2 kg, and their maternal milk tenofovir concentrations were “modestly greater” than the median at 6.57, 3.64, and 4.05 ng/mL, respectively.
Emtricitabine, on the other hand, was detectable in 47 of 49 (96%) infant plasma samples with a median concentration of 13.2 ng/mL.
“The estimated daily tenofovir and emtricitabine doses ingested by the infant through breastfeeding were 12,500-fold and 200-fold, respectively, lower than the proposed daily pediatric dose for prophylaxis against vertical HIV acquisition. Thus, infants had low exposures to tenofovir and emtricitabine, which would not be expected to pose substantial safety risk to infants of mothers who use PrEP during breastfeeding,” Dr. Mugwanya and his associates wrote.
“These data provide evidence suggesting that this PrEP regimen can be safely used during breastfeeding, which is informative for clinical guidelines for women who are at substantial risk of HIV during pregnancy and the postpartum period,” the researchers concluded.
This study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The authors did not report disclosures.
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