People with hemophilia who are HIV infected tend to develop more normally and remain at the asymptomatic stage longer than perinatally infected infants. Once these children progress to clinical AIDS, however, the course of the disease is similar to that found in perinatally infected infants. Common childhood infectious illnesses are likely to be severe in HIV-infected infants. As the infection progresses, infants can experience anemia, failure to thrive, fever, chronic diarrhea and thrush. Adequate nutrition of HIV-infected infants can be an ongoing problem.
Neurological involvement is common.
Many children have significant central nervous system manifestations of HIV infection as well as secondary bacterial and fungal infections of the central nervous system. AIDS in children can be a developmentally disabling disease and a significant proportion of infected children show develop- mental delays prior to exhibiting other signs of disease. Early intervention, however, can reduce the impact of these delays. As the disease progresses developmentally normal infants can become severely disabled while others remain normal or relatively unimpaired at four, five and even ten years of age. His primary care provider is his great grandmother who is 78 years old and has numerous health problems.