ATLANTA (AP) -- For the first time, health officials report that the AIDS virus
can be spread by a mother pre-chewing her infant's food, a practice mainly seen
in poor, developing countries.
Three such cases were reported in the United States from 1993-2004, government
scientists said Wednesday in a presentation in Boston at a scientific
conference.
It's blood, not saliva, that carried the virus because in at least two of the
cases the infected mothers had bleeding gums or mouth sores, according to
investigators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC officials say more study is needed. But they are asking parents and
caregivers with HIV not to pre-chew infants' food, and are trying to educate
doctors about this kind of transmission.
Health officials believe chewed-food transmission is rare in the United States,
where such behavior is considered unusual. In some countries, mothers do it
because they have no access to baby food or a means of pulverizing food for
toothless infants.
"But even one case is too many," said the CDC's Dr. Ken Dominguez, who helped
investigate the U.S. cases.
The first involved a 15-month-old African-American boy in Miami, diagnosed in
1993. His great-aunt was infected with HIV and pre-chewed food for the boy when
he was between the ages of 9 months and 14 months.
Then a 3-year-old Caribbean-American boy was diagnosed in 1995, also in Miami.
His HIV-infected mother pre-chewed food for her son.
Still uncertain they had definitively connected the practice to the spread of
HIV, the doctors wanted more evidence. It was years later before they could
confirm a third case, which occurred in 2004. A 9-month-old African-American
girl was diagnosed with HIV in Memphis. The mother began pre-chewing the girl's
food when she was about four months old.
All three children were infected with HIV at a time they would have been
teething and had inflamed gums. It may be that both a caregiver and a child must
have wounds in their mouths for the virus to have a good chance of passing from
one bloodstream to another, the investigators said.
Previous studies have linked pre-chewing to the spread of other infections
including Helicobacter pylori, a bacteria that causes stomach ailments, and
streptococcal pharyngitis, which triggers sore throat. That research, too, is
preliminary and needs to be confirmed, CDC officials said.
In developing nations without other feeding options, any campaign against
pre-chewing could be nutritionally harmful, said Kimberly Hagen at the Emory
Center for AIDS Research in Atlanta.
"This would really take a lot of thinking before you could say, 'We've had three
cases in 11 years, so you have to stop pre-chewing your child's food,'" Hagen
said.
Source : The Associated Press.
