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Comprehensive prenatal care key to reducing vertical HIV transmission
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Comprehensive prenatal care, including HIV testing, and surveillance and treatment are the keys to reducing the number of infants born to mothers with HIV, according to results published online this month.
“Elimination of prenatal HIV transmission will more likely be achieved if there is a high degree of coordination and active collaboration at local, state and federal levels,” Steven Nesheim, MD, of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, and colleagues wrote in their special article published in Pediatrics.
As long as there are new HIV infections in women who have children, a 100% goal of reducing transmission is not likely, but following a framework can reduce the number of transmissions, they said.
As part of the CDC framework, the agency proposed systems that will enable prevention and care for women who are exposed to HIV, emphasizing the importance of women’s access to prenatal care, as well as access to HIV tests and ART, if needed.
According to Nesheim and colleagues, following this framework could also have a positive effect on other perinatal infections, such as syphilis and hepatitis B.
The CDC researchers also highlighted in the paper the importance of surveillance and case finding, which they said “requires both universal HIV testing of pregnant women and a mechanism for detecting pregnancy among women with established HIV infection.” They said surveillance should entail reporting to public health departments and to other providers.
The study authors highlighted documented successes of these measures in the past few decades and concluded that “clinical management for HIV-infected pregnant women and their infants is credited with much of the documented reduction in perinatal HIV transmission.”
Disclosure: Nesheim reports no relevant financial disclosures.
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