A.I.D.S. starts to show in infants

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 5

A.I.D.S. starts to show in infants

By

PAUL RAEBURN

of Associated Press New York A.I.D.S. has become the most common infectious disease in newborn infants in some parts of New York City as it spreads Increasingly rapidly among children even as the adult A.I.D.S. epidemic slows, researchers said.

Fighting the spread of A.I.D.S. in children may be especially difficult because most infants with A.I.D.S. were born to mothers with no outward signs of disease, said Dr Howard Minkoff, director of obstetrics at the State University of New Yorkdownstate medical centre, Brooklyn. Of 34 mothers who gave birth to children with A.I.D.S. at Dr Minkoff’s hospital, only four had any symptoms of acquired immune deficiency syn-

drome or A.1.D.5.-related complex, known as A.R.C., a milder form of the disease. The mothers were the source of the A.I.D.S. infections in their children, however, and some of them later developed the disease, he said.

Up to January 13, 231 cases of A.I.D.S. in infants had been reported to the Federal Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta. About 40 per cent of them, or 103 cases, were in New York City. It was estimated that for every child who had A.I.D.S. in New York there were three to five children who had A.1.D.5.related complex, which may or may not progress to A.I.D.S. The number of children’s A.I.D.S. cases in New York was expected to double by the end of the year, while the num-

ber of cases in adults would not double for two years. A.I.D.S. has struck 16,227 adults nationwide, about one-third of those cases in New York City.

The disease weakens the immune systems of its victims, leaving them prey to unusual infections and forms of cancer. The disease is more likely to be fatal in children than in adults. Sixtynine per cent of the New York children with A.I.D.S. have died, but only 52 per cent of the city’s adults with A.I.D.S. have died since recordkeeping began in 1981.

Most of the children were born to mothers who were intravenous drug abusers, Dr Minkoff said. The birth of a child with A.I.D.S. could be the first signal that an entire family would develop the disease.