Contemporary diagnosis of HIV infection in pediatrician’s practice

The objective of the study : evaluation of the effectiveness of clinico-epidemiological and laboratory diagnostics of HIV infection in pediatric practice. Materials and methods. Under the supervision of pediatricians of the Department of motherhood and childhood of the St. Petersburg AIDS Center, there were 388 HIV-infected children aged from one month to 17 years inclusive. Due to the reasons of late detection and HIV dissidence of parents, 18 children (4%) died cumulatively among the children observed in St. Petersburg center for AIDS. The object of the immunohistochemical study was randomly selected HIV-infected children who applied to the center for prevention and control of AIDS for return visits. Material for testing for the presence of HIV-1 P24 antigen was taken from the back wall of the nasopharynx. Results. When analyzing the ways of HIV infection in children registered at the maternity and childhood Department of the Saint Petersburg AIDS Center, it turned out that 363 children were infected perinatally (93,6%), 23 (5,9%) sexually infected and 2 children through injecting drugs (0.5%). The proposed method of immunocytochemistry for the diagnosis of HIV infection in children can find its application, especially for primary diagnostics, which may simplify and reduce the cost of laboratory diagnostics.