HIV among pregnant women at Mexican hospital much higher than reported earlier.

2004 MAR 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- HIV infection among pregnant women in labor at Tijuana General Hospital in Mexico is 14 times higher than previously reported by CONASIDA, the Mexican organization that tracks AIDS cases, according to a study conducted by physicians at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine.

Presented at the 11th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in February 2004, the study found a 1.26% HIV infection rate among 947 women in labor tested during June through September 2003. CONASIDA had estimated the prevalence of HIV infection at only 0.09% among pregnant Mexican women.

"The key to preventing HIV infection in children is the identification and treatment of pregnant women who are HIV positive," said Rolando Viani, MD, UCSD assistant professor of pediatrics, who presented the findings at the conference. "Unfortunately, HIV testing during pregnancy is not routinely done at Tijuana General Hospital."

The researchers found that the vast majority of women in labor (96.7% of those asked) were willing to undergo HIV counseling and rapid-result testing. When a woman in active labor was found to be HIV positive, she was given the drug zidovudine (ZDV, AZT) intravenously, and was advised to refrain from breast feeding, which is a means of transmitting the disease to her infant. Within the first week of life, the newborn was tested for HIV, with repeat tests at 4 weeks, 2 months, and 4 months. The child also received zidovudine orally for 6 weeks. In addition to the test in labor and delivery, the women were given follow-up tests to confirm the diagnosis after delivery.

The problem of HIV/AIDS in Tijuana doesn't stop at the border, added Stephen Spector, MD, chair of the executive committee of the National Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trial Group, chief of the UCSD Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, and director of UCSD's Mother, Child & Adolescent HIV Program, which oversaw the UCSD study at Tijuana General Hospital.

The Tijuana/San Diego border crossing is the busiest land port of entry in the world with more than 131,000 legal border crossings daily. Because so many people cross the border on a daily basis, and since Mexicans frequently seek medical care and consultation in the United States, San Diego is impacted by the rate of HIV infection in Tijuana, Spector noted.

"Our maternal-child HIV clinic at UCSD is about 50% Latinas," Viani said. "Of these women, 95% are of Mexican descent. This points to the problem that spills over on both sides of the border."