Time Lapse After Water Breaks Tied to Risk of Mother Giving Baby HIV
From Times staff and wire reports
HIV-positive women who give birth more than four hours after the rupture of the fetal membranes--breaking of their water--are nearly twice as likely to transmit the virus to their infants as women who give birth less than four hours afterward, according to a study in the June 20 New England Journal of Medicine. Maternal drug use during pregnancy, low prenatal CD4 lymphocyte count and low infant birth weight were also independently associated with an increased risk of transmission to the infant, according to the multi-center Woman and Infants Transmission Study.
About 7,000 HIV-positive women give birth in the United States every year and, without treatment, about one-quarter of them transmit the virus to their children.
