Abstract

GONZALEZ, Ida et al. Immunological characteristic of HIV infected children by vertical way: cases and controls study. Rev. invest. clín. [online]. 2005, vol.57, n.4, pp.498-504. ISSN 2564-8896.

HIV infection in children conditions a serious immunodeficiency with special characteristic that distinguish it from the adult, causing a global immune deficit. This constitutes a cases and controls study between Cuban paediatric patients infected with HIV by vertical transmission and a control group of supposedly healthy children. The both groups were characterized from the clinical point of view and markers were used for evaluated the immunologic and virologycal state. Clinically 75% of patients present a pattern of precocious progression, from total only two stay asymptomatic. All HIV infected children receive antirretroviral treatment and three of them present values of viral load bigger than 100,000 cp/mL. The immune alterations found in the HIV infected children compared with healthy children were: a cellular immune depletion with diminish counts of lymphocytes subsets of T CD4+, CD16+/CD56 + and CD19+, an increase in subsets of CD3+, CD8+, CD8+/CD38+, CD3+/ CD95+ and a hipergammaglobulinemia to prevalence of immunoglobulin gamma IgG (p < 0.05). On the other hand, they were not significantly differences in the serum levels of both C3 and C4, as well as in the haemolytic activity of the roads classic and it alternates of the complement system. This finding allowed us to a better attention and treatment of paediatric HIV patients.

Keywords : HIV; Lymphocytes T CD4; IgG; IgA; Paediatrics; CH50.