Science / Medicine : HIV-Infected Babies’ Longevity

Children infected with the AIDS virus while in the womb are living longer and healthier lives than experts believed possible only a few years ago, according to research being compiled by a team of doctors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Half of all HIV-infected babies studied by the group were free of symptoms by age 5.

Pediatrician Yvonne Maldonado of the Stanford University Medical Center said the findings give hope to care givers. Previously, she said, “the attitude has been that ‘These kids will all be dead by age 2--let’s not try to do anything, let’s not focus on them.’ ”

The study of 185 HIV-infected Northern California infants appears to support a 1988 New York City study that found two distinctly different risk groups of HIV-infected children: those who sicken and die very quickly as infants, and those who live into childhood.

The New York study found that 20% of HIV-infected newborns develop AIDS in the first year of life. For those infants, the median incubation period was only 4.1 months. The other 80% of infected children developed AIDS at a nearly constant rate of 8% a year, which is comparable to the rate among adults. The median incubation period for them was 6.1 years, and 25% remained healthy at age 10.