Last year, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated that pregnant women infected with HIV can reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to their infants by approximately 50 percent if they deliver by elective cesarean section before they have gone into labor and their membranes have ruptured. Combined with what was previously known about the use of AZT or other antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy, transmission of HIV from mother to child can be reduced to approximately 2 percent. There are still many pediatric diseases that are not preventable or for which treatment may not exist, may only be palliative, or is simply inadequate. Modern therapy for such diseases is cumbersome, costly and stressful for children and their families. Whereas it is obvious that we want children to have healthier childhoods, it may be less obvious that improvements in pediatric medicine will have far-reaching implications on the societal and economic costs of disease in adults.
Many diseases usually associated with adulthood actually have their origins in childhood.
Thus, a strengthened investment in pediatric research will benefit adults as well as children. An illustrative example is childhood obesity that now affects as many as one in five children in the United States. Obesity predisposes children to develop Type II diabetes, insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease. African American, Latino, American and Pima Indian children are at even greater risk for these disorders. With the growing rate of obesity in children and adolescents, pediatric research is needed to develop effective interventions to prevent morbidity both during childhood and adulthood.