infant – BioQuakes

While the answer to this question is very broad, there is hope that the number of people living with HIV throughout the world will significantly decrease in the near future due to a toddler who was cured of the virus.

About 1000 infants are born with HIV every day, that’s about 330,000 children each year. While most of the infections are in the developing world, there is still a vast number of people living with HIV in first world countries. An example is the Mississippi mother who had no idea she had HIV until a few days before she gave birth to her baby. Once the doctors learned she was infected with the virus, they took precautionary measures to ensure they could prevent the transfer of HIV during birth, a very common way of HIV transmission along with breast feeding. Once the baby was born Dr. Hannah Gay administer three drugs to the baby within thirty hours of birth. Typically, babies born from mothers with HIV are given two drugs as a prophylactic measure, however Dr. Gay said “her standard is to use a three drug regimen to treat an infection. She did this on the infant without waiting for HIV test results” (CNN.com)

Gay believes that the timing of the drug treatment was extremely crucial, and is key to effectively treating HIV in children/newborns. Currently, researchers are trying to see if this “cure” is an anomaly for a short period of time, or if the cure is permanent. In addition, physicians and scientists are optimistic, hoping that this cure will prevent many children from living with HIV throughout the world. Although the antiviral medications are very costly, doctors believe that it is not a stretch to offer these medications in third world countries and are hoping to soon make these medications available to many clinics throughout the world, assuming the “cure” was a success.

Read more at: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/health/hiv-cure-global-hope/index.html?hpt=he_t3

Cute Baby
Photo By: Christopher Lance
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninedragons/4822437519/

photo cred: localtvkstu.files.wordpress.com

While pregnant or in labor, women experience amounts of pain that most men couldn’t dream of. They have to put up with this pain somehow…so according to a recent article, over the last decade, there has been a rise in use of prescription pain killers that has spread to maternity wards in the US. Unfortunately, because these painkillers are opiate-based, there has also been a rapid increase in the number of pregnant women addicted to opiates and also the number of babies born with withdrawal symptoms.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has estimated that about one baby every hour is born with opiate withdrawal symptoms, and about 13,500 per year. According to the study, this condition, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, results in seizures, breathing problems, dehydration, difficulty feeding, tremors and irritability in infants at birth. These infants must be hospitalized for up to many weeks while doctors ween them of their opium dependence with smaller doses of morphine or methadone.

The study, after looking at two databases consisting of “representative samples” from patients across the country, made two shocking discoveries. Over the period from 2000-2009, the number of pregnant women using opiate pain killers increased to five times as much, while the number of babies diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome tripled at the same rate.

Not only is it an awful thing for these infants to be born addicted to opiates, but it also takes “a tremendous amount of nursing care” and time to cure these babies, according to Dr. Mark Hudak of the University of Florida College of Medicine. In the study, infants averaged about 16 days in the hospital. It takes them this long to be initially “cuddled,” placed in a dark room, then given tapered doses of methadone or morphine until the baby is weened. However, Hudak also states that “[morphine and methadone] are easy to overdose babies with” and that “there have been deaths” in this treatment.

According to the article, doctors agree that the best approach to deal with this problem is to cure women of their addictions before they are pregnant and prescribe them little or no opiate painkillers.

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: infant

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