Association Between Maternal HIV Infection & Low Birth Weight & Prematurity: A Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies

To assess the association between maternal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and low birth weight (LBW)/prematurity (PTD), we conducted a meta-analysis of cohort studies of HIV infected and uninfected women.

Several English and Chinese databases were searched (updated to May 2015) to find the studies reporting infant outcomes associated with exposure to maternal HIV infection during pregnancy. Relevant articles were manually selected based on several inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Fifty-two cohort studies including 15,538 (for LBW) and 200,896 (for PTD) HIV infected women met the inclusion criteria. There was significant heterogeneity among studies for maternal HIV infection associated with LBW/PTD. The meta-analysis demonstrated that the maternal HIV infection was significantly associated with both LBW (pooled odds ratio (OR): 1.73, 95 % confidence interval (CI): 1.64, 1.82,P < 0.001) and PTD (pooled OR: 1.56, 95 % CI: 1.49, 1.63, P < 0.001). No significant difference in the relationship between maternal HIV infection and adverse pregnancy outcomes was detected among the groups of different study periods. HIV infected women were at slightly higher risk of LBW in developing countries compared with women in developed countries (OR: 2.12 (95 % CI: 1.81, 2.48) vs. 1.75 (95 % CI: 1.44, 2.12)). Antiretroviral drugs usage did not significantly change the associations of maternal HIV exposure with LBW and PTD.

HIV infected women were at higher risk of having a low birth weight infant or a preterm delivery infant compared with uninfected women. Such associations did not change significantly over time or were not significantly affected by the usage of antiretroviral drugs.

Full article at: http://goo.gl/9lcBoZ

By: Peng-Lei Xiao¹²³, Yi-Biao Zhou^123*, Yue Chen⁴, Mei-Xia Yang⁵, Xiu-Xia Song¹²³, Yan Shi¹²³ and Qing-Wu Jiang¹²³

¹Fudan University School of Public Health, Building 8, 130 Dong’an Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200032, China

²Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Fudan University, Ministry of Education, Building 8, 130 Dong’an Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200032, China

³Fudan University Center for Tropical Disease Research, Building 8, 130 Dong’an Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200032, China

⁴School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa K1H 8 M5, ON, Canada

⁵Xuhui Center for Disease Prevention and Control, 50 Yongchuan Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200032, China

  

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