PERINATAL FINDINGS IN CHILDREN BORN TO HIV-INFECTED MOTHERS

Objective To explore in children born to HIV-infected women, the assoc iation between a child's HIV infection status and birthweight, gestati onal age, congenital abnormalities and other perinatal findings. Desig n A prospective study of children born to women known to be HIV-infect ed at or before the time of delivery enrolled in the European Collabor ative Study. Setting Nineteen European centres. Subjects A cohort of 8 53 children with known HIV infection status. Results There was no evid ence for an HIV dysmorphic syndrome, and the frequency of congenital a bnormalities was similar in infected and uninfected children with no c onsistent pattern of defects. Injecting drug use during pregnancy had the most marked effect on birthweight and gestational age. Multivariat e analysis demonstrated a weak association between birthweight and the child's HIV infection status, but this could partly be explained by t he confounding effect of maternal immunological HIV status. HIV infect ion in the infant was not associated with gestational age, and the mea n and distribution of gestational age were similar for infected and no ninfected children. Conclusions The finding that HIV-infected and noni nfected children are of similar birthweight, the absence of a dysmorph ic syndrome and no evidence of associated congenital abnormalities sug gest that a substantial proportion of infection occurs late in pregnan cy or at the time of delivery.