IMPAACT Study P1104s, published December 18, 2019 in the online journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, found that children who acquired HIV in utero or during birth or breastfeeding did not perform as well on tests measuring cognitive ability, motor function and attention as their peers who do not have HIV. The publication prompted a News Release in the NIAID News & Events Newsroom titled “Children with HIV Score Below HIV-Negative Peers in Cognitive, Motor Function Tests.” This disparity worsens over time despite early HIV treatment, the NIH study finds.
Despite initiation of Antiretroviral therapy in early childhood and good viral suppression at the time of enrollment, the study found that the HIV positive group had poorer neuropsychological performance over time, with the gap progressively worsening in planning/reasoning.
These results highlight the need to investigate the underlying mechanism of these neuropsychological challenges, and to develop additional interventions to support children who acquire HIV early in life.
The study was conducted by the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network, supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute of Mental Health, all components of the National Institutes of Health.
Frontier Science Foundation is the Data Management Center for this study, and Bonnie Zimmer is the Protocol Data Manager.
Michael J Boivin, Miriam Chernoff, Lee Fairlie, Barbara Laughton, Bonnie Zimmer, Celeste Joyce, Linda Barlow-Mosha, Mutsawashe Bwakura-Dangarembizi, Tichaona Vhembo, Mmule Ratswana, Portia Kamthunzi, Katie McCarthy, Itziar Familiar-Lopez, Patrick Jean-Philippe, Joan Coetzee, Nasreen Abrahams, Hermien Gous, Avy Violari, Mark F Cotton, Paul E Palumbo, African Multi-Site 2-Year Neuropsychological Study of School-Age Children Perinatally Infected, Exposed, and Unexposed to Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Clinical Infectious Diseases, , ciz1088, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciz1088