Science/Medicine : AIDS Hurts Young Hearts

The deadly AIDS virus can ravage the hearts and arteries of babies and children, a discovery that complicates efforts to prolong the lives of the disease’s youngest victims, researchers said.

Autopsies show that infants and children with AIDS suffer inflamed and enlarged hearts, damage to cells that make the heart beat, and thickening and degeneration of arteries, according to Dr. Saroja Bharati, a Browns Mills, N.J., pathologist.

She said it is not yet known if the heart and artery damage was directly caused by the AIDS virus or was an indirect result of the virus wrecking the children’s immune systems.

Two other studies found children infected with the AIDS virus suffer congestive heart failure, reduction in the heart’s ability to pump and poor contraction of heart muscle fibers.

AIDS-related heart damage can kill the children before other AIDS-induced disorders, although such damage often isn’t apparent unless tests are performed, the researchers said.

Bharati said her findings suggest that when and if drugs are developed to prolong the lives of children with AIDS, they still could face early death from abnormal heart rhythms caused by cardiac damage.