Posted on February 5, 2001 at 1:36 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Dr. Jay Brooks Jackson, a leading AIDS researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will deliver the 22nd Annual Reynolds Historical Lecture at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). The lecture, sponsored by the Reynolds Library Associates, will be at 4 p.m. on Friday, February 9, in the Ireland Room, on the third floor of the Lister Hill Library, 1700 University Boulevard.

Jackson, who is a professor of pathology and interim director of Pathology for Clinical Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will speak on "The Use of Antiretrovirals for the Prevention of HIV Transmission: Past and Future."

Jackson is an internationally renowned scientist, who recently led a joint Uganda-United States study that found a highly effective and safe drug regimen for preventing transmission of HIV from an infected mother to her newborn that is more affordable and practical than any other regimen examined to date, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The NIH reported that Jackson’s study demonstrated that a single oral dose of the antiretroviral drug nevirapine given to an HIV-infected woman in labor and another to her baby within three days of birth reduces the transmission rate by half compared to a similar short course of AZT. If implemented widely in developing countries, this intervention potentially could prevent some 300,000 to 400,000 newborns per year from beginning life infected with HIV.

The annual Reynolds Historical Lecture is the foremost presentation in a series of lectures bringing speakers of international prominence to UAB. For further information call the Reynolds Library at (205) 934-4475.