HIV No Longer a Death Sentence for Kids
Filed under: In The News, Health
Business Week reports most kids born with HIV survive to adulthood. Credit: Getty Images
In fact, Business Week reports, most kids born with HIV survive to adulthood. Years ago, HIV was a death sentence for children.
Why the improvement?
Business Week reports researchers are tracking kids with HIV (the AIDS-causing virus) and coming up with better ways to treat the condition and its complications.
"About two thirds of these kids, at this point, don't have virus detectable in the blood," Dr. Russell Van Dyke, an infectious diseases expert at Tulane University, says in a university news release. "While they are still infected and they are not cured, it's surprising how well they're doing, considering what they've been through."
Death is the worst thing that can happen to HIV victims. But it's not the only thing.
"We're not seeing the deaths we used to see due to infections, but we're starting to worry about longer-term complications," Van Dyke says in the release. "Some of these complications may be related to the HIV itself, or some may be related to the medications these kids are on."
Complications can include coronary artery disease and cognitive problems. But Van Dyke adds that patients could have normal -- or at least near-normal -- life spans. That means HIV/AIDS is becoming a chronic disease, not an always-fatal one.
"These kids are doing very well," Van Dyke says in the release. "They're going to school and doing all of the things that ki! ds shoul d do. Hopefully, they will be living 50 or 60 years or more, so what's going to happen 40 years from now is the real concern."
Want to get the latest ParentDish news and advice? Sign up for our newsletter!
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Comments