Important note: Information in this article was accurate in July 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, July 9, 2001
Michael Greer, Staff Medical Writer
NewsRx - Physicians have long suspected that breastfeeding by HIV positive mothers poses substantial health risks to children. However, researchers in Kenya have shown that breastfeeding may be dangerous to infected women as well.
R. Nduati and colleagues at the University of Nairobi conducted a study to measure the risk of HIV transmission to infants after breastfeeding from infected mothers. "However, we also analyzed data from this trial to examine the effect of breastfeeding on maternal death rates during 2 years after delivery," they wrote in the journal Lancet.
HIV positive mothers who breastfeed their children face significantly higher mortality risks than those who use formula although the reasons for this elevated risk were unclear, Nduati and coworkers reported.
The researchers examined 425 HIV positive mothers attending four different health clinics in Nairobi. They found that the women who breastfed their children were almost three times as likely to succumb to their infection as mothers who used formula to feed their infants.
Two years after delivery, the maternal mortality rate was 10.5% in the breastfeeding cohort compared with 3.8% among women who used formula, study data showed. According to Nduati and coauthors almost 70% of the mortality risk faced by mothers who breastfed their children was attributable to this practice.
Children whose mothers succumbed to HIV had a subsequent mortality risk almost eight times higher than that of children with surviving mothers, even after adjusting their mortality risk to account for possible HIV infection ("Effect of breastfeeding on mortality among HIV 1 infected women: A randomised trial," Lancet, 2001;357(9269):1651-1655).
"Our findings suggest that breastfeeding by HIV 1 infected women might result in adverse outcomes for both mother and infant," Nduati and colleagues concluded.
The corresponding author for this report is R. Nduati, University of Nairobi, Dept. of Pediatrics, P.O. Box 19676, Nairobi, Kenya.
Key points reported in this study include:
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