14 DAY TRIAL // The world is still in search of an anti-HIV cure, but even so, the antivirals employed currently can manage to prolong the life of the infected ones for decades.
Generations of children who could not reach sexual maturity before, are able to do this now. But these youngsters do not grow healthy, as the root of the evil could not be cut off.
Girls born with HIV-infection and sexually active were found to have higher levels of cervical abnormalities than previously expected: in about 50 % of the cases!
The discovery has been made by a research team at the Harvard School of Public Health. The team assessed the rate of first-time pregnancies, genital health and Pap test results of 638 girls, with ages 13 and over, HIV infected around the time of birth. "We have already seen this (cervical abnormalities) in HIV-infected women. But, in the adolescent girls, we didn't expect to see as high rates as we did", said lead author, Dr. Susan Brogly.
And just half of the girls had Pap tests, which is developed for detecting uterine abnormalities. "It's hard to get adolescents into the [HIV] clinic and when we do seem them, we need to look at the HIV and what's going on with the HIV disease. But the clinicians [also] have to be thinking of the sexual health of these girls." said Brogly.
Few researches have investigated the rate of pregnancy among HIV-positive girls, and even fewer the reproductive health of those who got infected with HIV at birth. "This is an important reason for trying to protect this population from invasive cervical cancer with the HPV vaccine. Cervical cancer is an AIDS-defining illness and young girls are at higher risk of progressing to cervical cancer if they are also HIV-infected", said Dr. Joseph Harwell, an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Brown University, not involved in the research.
Brogly's team is going to investigate the results of HPV vaccine in this case.