The health and social environment of uninfected infants born to HIV-infected women.

Abstract

Against a background of increasing numbers of uninfected children born to HIV-infected women in Europe, we describe the social environment and occurrence of infectious disease in 1,667 infants enrolled in the European Collaborative Study (ECS) and followed prospectively. In the ECS, the proportion of children born to black women from Sub-Saharan Africa who acquired their HIV infection heterosexually has increased since the mid-1980s, while the proportion of those born to white women with a history of illicit drug use has decreased, in both northern and southern Europe. The percentage of children who had been in alternative (non-parental) care decreased from 17% (82/469) in 1985-1989 to 5% (23/436) in 1999-2002. A total of 135 infants (with 1,475 child-years of follow-up) experienced at least one moderate/severe infective or febrile episode requiring medical attention in the first year of life; there was little correlation with recorded sociodemographic and child characteristics. The rate of hospitalization remained relatively stable over the study period at between 243-299 admissions per 1,000 child-years. Description of disease burden and social circumstances of uninfected children is needed, not only because of their increasing numbers but also because they are often used as controls in studies addressing vertically-acquired HIV infection.