Any hope for infants with HIV-positive mothers?

Formula feeding is cheap and available in developed countries. In other parts of the world, because access to clean water, formula and antiretroviral therapy (ART) is not easy and breast feeding as an option is cheap and comes with known health benefits, many mothers resort to breast feeding even while infected with the HIV virus.

What hope can there be for millions of children at risk? Last month, the Mississipi baby who was thought to have been cured of HIV, disappointingly, was reported with detected levels of the virus. This poses a challenge to pediatric health specialist to proffer new immune-based protective strategies, new vaccines for delivery to children at risk of being infected with HIV virus through breast milk, to think up new ways to boost potentially protective maternal antibodies.

While seeking answers to these challenges, foremost at the minds of these health workers are the effectiveness, facility of administration and the safety of whatever strategies they can think up, even if HIV-preventive nutritional supplements are expected to be part of the offerings.

One fact is clear: in view of the recent news about the Mississipi girl, new strategies have to be pursued to help children at risk of infection with HIV virus through breast milk.

Further reading: Scientists call for new strategy in pursuit of HIV-free generation.

Fighting HIV infections through seminal bacteria

Semen contains sperm, immune factors and communities of bacteria. The latter two have been studied for their effect or relationship to the amount of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in semen or what is termed, the viral load. It was decided that infection with HIV re-shapes the relationship between semen bacteria and immune factors which in turn affects the viral load.

A recent study was a research on the relationship between semen bacteria and HIV infection using semen samples from 49 men who have sex with men (MSM). The MSM population was pertinent because of its high risk to HIV infection and transmission. Thereafter, some were put on anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for 6 months.

Both men discovered that persons infected with untreated HIV have markedly reduced seminal microbial diversity . After 6 months ART therapy, semen viral load was found reduced to undetectable levels while bacterial diversity in the semen was restored.

This result supports the hypothesis that seminal bacteria plays a role in HIV shedding and should be a possible target in the fight against HIV transmission through sexual activity.

Further reading: The Semen Microbiome and Its Relationship with Local Immunology and Viral Load in HIV Infection.