Author: Mark Mascolini
08 February 2010
African American infants under 1 year old become infected with HIV 23 times more often than white children that age in the United States, and Hispanic infants become infected almost 4 times more than white infants.
Those findings come from a 34-state Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study of perinatal HIV diagnosis among infants and children from 2004 through 2007, the latest data available. The 34 states are those with name-based reporting since at least December 2003. California is not one of those states and has a high HIV prevalence and large Hispanic population.
The report includes some good news on US minority populations: The HIV diagnosis rate dropped for black and Hispanic infants over the study years.
From 2004 through 2007, the diagnosis rate of perinatal HIV infection in children under 1 year old averaged 2.7 per 100,000 infants. Rates were highest for African-American infants (12.3 per 100,000) followed by Hispanics (2.0), infants of multiple races (1.6), and whites (0.5).
Compared with white infants, black infants had a 23.1 times higher perinatal HIV diagnosis rate, Hispanics had a 3.8 times higher rate, and mixed-race infants had a 3.1 times higher rate.
During the study years, the annual perinatal HIV diagnosis rate fell from 14.8 to 10.2 per 100,000 infants among African Americans (P = 0.003) and from 2.9 to 1.7 per 100,000 among Hispanics (P = 0.04). Rates did not decline for white and mixed-race infants.
To further limit perinatal HIV transmission, the CDC calls for “primary HIV prevention for women, reproductive health and family planning for women with HIV infection, and prenatal care and early treatment with antiretroviral medications for pregnant women and their infants.”
Source: M.A. Lampe, S. Nesheim, R.L. Shouse, C.B. Borkowf, V. Minasandram, K. Little, P.H. Kilmarx, S. Whitmore, A. Taylor, L. Valleroy. Racial/ethnic disparities among children with diagnoses of perinatal HIV infection—34 states, 2004-2007. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2010; 59(04): 97-101
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