Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection of Newborns

Abstract

Although the total number of reported cases of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in children in the United States is less than 2 percent of the number in adults, the seriousness of the problem of pediatric AIDS threatens to grow in the coming years, as increasing numbers of women of childbearing age become infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through intravenous drug use or heterosexual transmission. The epidemiology of pediatric AIDS is, of course, strikingly different from that of its adult counterpart. At present, approximately 80 percent of the children who have AIDS were infected through perinatal transmission, whereas . . .