[Maternal characteristics of a cohort of pregnant women with HIV-1 infection].

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The main strategies to avoid the vertical transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) is antiretroviral treatment during pregnancy, delivery and to the newborn. Nevertheless, there are scant data about safety of antiretroviral drugs and follow-up studies with a large number of pregnant women are needed. The aims of our study are: to assess toxicity associated with antiretroviral treatment, to determine vertical transmission, and to define epidemiological trends within this population. In this paper we present maternal characteristics of the cohort.

PATIENTS AND METHOD: Observational, multicentric, collaborative study about an HIV-1 infected pregnant women cohort and their offspring (666 and 686 cases, respectively) who were born during the study period (from January or May 2000 to 31st december 2003).

RESULTS: Most pregnant women were infected by heterosexual transmission (54%). 71% women were included in stage A of the Centers for Disease Control classification of HIV infection and 74% women have received high activity antiretroviral treatment during pregnancy. Prevalence of adverse effects treatment-related was 7%, mainly anaemia related to treatment with zidovudine. We found 6 cases of vertical transmission among 686 newborns (0.8%; 95% confidence interval, 0.3-1.8).

CONCLUSIONS: Most patients received highly active antiretroviral treatment, with a good tolerance and a low prevalence of adverse effects related to the treatment. Vertical transmission rate is very low, not higher than 1%. Apart from this, is necessary to pay attention to other phenomena like hepatitis C virus coinfection, other potentially serious adverse effects like hepatotoxicity and pregnancy-related pathologies more frequent in this population, like prematurity and gestational diabetes.