Outcomes of antiretroviral treatment for 0-14-year-old children living with HIV in Ganzhou, China, 2006-2023.

Background: Studies on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in children living with HIV (CLHIV) are limited due to the small population and low accession rate of ART.

Methods: All 0-14-year-old CLHIV admitted to the Ganzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention from January 2006 to June 2023 were included retrospectively. The information of treatment regimens, disease progression, and laboratory tests of the patients under ART were used to explore the outcomes and impacts of long-term ART. The normality of all the data was tested by the Shapiro-Wilk test.

Results: From 2006 to 2023, 18 CLHIV were reported in Ganzhou. Among them, 11 received ART and were followed up for 60.0 ± 48.4 months. After receiving ART, the median viral load of them decreased from 89,600 copies/ml to 22 copies/ml (P = 0.007), the median CD4 T cell count increased from 380.7 cells/µL to 661.9 cells/µL (P = 0.028), and the median CD8 T cell count decreased from 1065.8 cells/µL to 983.3 cells/µL (P = 0.584). The laboratory test results regarding liver function, renal function, blood cell count, and glucolipid metabolism tended to be within normal reference ranges, and the mean height-for-age z-score and weight-for-age z-score increased. However, all the three CLHIV who received cotrimoxazole developed pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, upper respiratory infection, skin lesions, bacterial pneumonia and/or thrush; the mean body-mass-index-for-age z-score decreased from 0.52 to -0.63.

Conclusion: For CLHIV, ART could effectively inhibit the replication of HIV and improve the immune function of patients. More studies that focus on ART in CLHIV are urgently needed.