The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported for the first time that mothers with the AIDS virus could transmit it to their infants through pre-chewed food.
The practice is seen typically in developing countries, and officials believe this type of transmission is rare in the United States where such behavior is considered unusual. In some countries, mothers pre-chew infant food because they have no access to baby food or are without other ways of pulverizing food for infants who haven’t yet grown teeth.
During a presentation at this year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, government scientists reported three such cases in the U.S. from 1993-2004.
“But even one case is too many,” the CDC’s Dr. Ken Dominguez, who helped investigate the U.S. cases, told AP.
The CDC said that they believed all of the transmissions were carried through blood, and not saliva, since in at least two of the cases the mothers had either gum sores or bleeding gums.
Although more study is needed, government health officials are asking parents and caregivers with HIV not to pre-chew infants’ food, and are educating doctors about this kind of transmission.
The first U.S. case occurred in Miami, where a 15-month-old African-American boy was diagnosed in 1993. His great-aunt was infected with HIV and pre-chewed food for the boy when he was between the ages of 9 months and 14 months.
The second case involved a 3-year-old Caribbean-American boy, also in Miami. He was diagnosed in 1995, after his HIV-infected mother had pre-chewed his food.
After seeing the two cases, doctors suspected, but were not yet certain, of a connection between pre-chewing food and HIV transmission.
Their suspicions were confirmed in 2004, when a third case, a 9-month-old African-American girl in Memphis, was diagnosed with HIV. The mother had been pre-chewing the girl’s food for approximately 5 months.
Authorities said all three children were infected with HIV during a time they would have been teething and had inflamed gums. Investigators suspect that both caregiver and child must have wounds in their mouths for the virus to pass from one bloodstream to another.
Prior studies have shown a link between pre-chewing and the spread of other infections including Helicobacter pylori, a bacteria that causes stomach ailments, and streptococcal pharyngitis, which triggers sore throat. However, CDC officials told AP the research is still preliminary and needs to be confirmed.
Some health officials are wary of any broad scale effort to curb or eliminate pre-chewing, saying it could be nutritionally harmful.
Kimberly Hagen at the Emory Center for AIDS Research in Atlanta told AP, “This would really take a lot of thinking before you could say, ‘We’ve had three cases in 11 years, so you have to stop pre-chewing your child’s food.'”
—
On the Net:
Additional Information about this year’s Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections can be viewed at
http://www.retroconference.org/2008/
Comments