HIV Infection in Infants and Children: Signs and Symptoms

Signs and Symptoms

Many children with HIV infection do not gain weight or grow normally. HIV-infected children frequently are slow to reach important milestones in motor skills and mental development such as crawling, walking, and talking. As the disease progresses, many children develop neurologic problems such as difficulty walking, poor school performance, seizures, and other symptoms of HIV encephalopathy (a brain disorder).

Orphan Child

Like adults with HIV infection, children with HIV develop life-threatening opportunistic infections (OIs), although the incidence of various OIs differs in adults and children.

• Toxoplasmosis (a parasitic disease) is seen less frequently in HIV-infected children than in HIV-infected adults, while serious bacterial infections occur more commonly in children than in adults.
• Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) is the leading cause of death in HIV-infected children with AIDS. PCP, as well as cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease, usually are primary infections in children, whereas in adults these diseases result from the reactivation of latent infections.
• A lung disease called lymphocytic interstitial pneumonitis (LIP), rarely seen in adults, occurs more frequently in HIV-infected children. This condition, like PCP, can make breathing progressively more difficult and often results in hospitalization.
• Severe candidiasis, a yeast infection that can cause unrelenting diaper rash and infections in the mouth and throat that make eating difficult, is found frequently in HIV-infected children.
• As children with HIV become sicker, they may suffer from chronic diarrhea due to opportunistic pathogens.

Children with HIV suffer the usual childhood infections more frequently and more severely than uninfected children. These infections can cause seizures, fever, pneumonia, recurrent colds, diarrhea, dehydration, and other problems that often result in extended hospital stays and nutritional problems. Source: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases