Asthma may be over-diagnosed in children born with HIV

Asthma may be over-diagnosed in children born with HIV, according to a new study from the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study (PHACS), based at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Tulane University School of Medicine. Instead, the children appear to have early chronic obstructive lung disease that does not respond to bronchodilator inhalers and may increase the risk for lung complications later in life, the researchers found. This lung obstruction was strongly associated with a weakened immune response.

The study, led by William Shearer at Baylor University, appears online in the October 2017 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Harvard Chan School co-authors include Denise Jacobson, Wendy Yu, and Erin Leister of the Department of Biostatistics, Center for Biostatistics and AIDS Research.

PHACS is a multi-site, long-term follow-up study of children, youth, and young adults in the U.S. exposed to HIV and antiretroviral medications at birth or who have had HIV since birth. PHACS is funded by eight National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes and the NIH Office of AIDS Research. Principal investigators are George Seage, professor of epidemiology of Harvard Chan School and director of the PHACS Data and Operations Center, and Russell Van Dyke, professor of clinical pediatrics at Tulane University School of Medicine and director of the PHACS Coordinating Center.

Read a press release about the new study: Asthma might be over diagnosed in children born with HIV

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