July 1998 issue, by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. By Mark Bowers, Managing Editor For many parents, telling the difference between HIV infection and antibodies against HIV in the blood of a newborn child is confusing and frightening. Many maternal antibodies are able to cross the placenta during pregnancy and play an important role in protecting the developing fetus. Maternal antibodies to diphtheria, tetanus, steptococcosis, measles, rubella, mumps and polio all provide temporary protection from these diseases in newborns. This protection lasts only a few months, so routine childhood immunizations begin at 2 months and continue throughout childhood.
Immunizations are critically important for the continued health of all children.
Scattered reports have suggested that some children who have both antibodies and HIV RNA remain only briefly HIV-infected. The University of Rochester Department of Pediatrics studied 42 reports of transient HIV infection among 1,562 infants who were exposed at birth to HIV and had antibodies against the virus. Instead, laboratory errors and switched or mislabeled blood samples accounted for the apparent ability of some HIV infected children to successfully eliminate infection.