What does existing research say on the use of antiretroviral drugs for nonoccupational HIV exposures?
In 1994, using surveillance data from healthcare workers in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States, a case-control study documented that although failures occurred, the use of zidovudine (ZDV) for postexposure prophylaxis was associated with an approximately 81% decrease in the risk for HIV infection after percutaneous exposure to HIV-infected blood (Cardo 1997). The investigators have pointed out the study’s limitations, including the facts that cases and controls were not matched and came from two separate populations; cases were often reported anecdotally; and details of the exposures were obtained retrospectively, whereas the information on controls was gathered prospectively. These and other factors may have introduced bias, possibly overestimating the magnitude of the protective effect. In addition, the validity of extrapolating those results to nonoccupational exposures was questioned. In a clinical trial of ZDV administered to HIV-infected women during pregnan
