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Paediatric Pulmonology and Allergology
2003 April, Vol. VI, No. 1 (pp.2162-2167)
Manifestations of HIV in the paediatric lung
Jane C. Davies
The advent of HAART has had a significant impact on the clinical features of HIV disease in both children and adults. One result of this success has a widening of the gap between developing and developed countries, in terms of scale of the problem, mode of presentation and morbidity. Whilst HIV-infected children in the USA and Europe are now commonly surviving infancy and living relatively healthy lives on treatment, those in Africa are often acutely unwell at the time of diagnosis, living in adverse social circumstances, often after the death of one or both parents, and are often malnourished. The vast majority have no access to ART, although treatment is now being provided to HIV-infected pregnant women in some African countries, in an attempt to reduce vertical transmission. Respiratory disease is a major cause of both morbidity an mortality in this context. It is hoped that both the governments of these countries and the pharmaceutical companies involved in drug development will make addressing these issues a priority in the very near future.