In the Hypertension session, Tammy Brady, M.D., Ph.D., vice chair for clinical research in the Department of Pediatrics at the school of medicine and medical director of the pediatric hypertension program at the Children’s Center, will share results of a study by her and fellow researchers on how HIV infection impacts blood pressure in children.
My name is tammy brady and I'm the vice chair for clinical research in the department of pediatrics as well as the medical director for the pediatric hypertension program. I'm really excited to share the results of our research entitled Association of Perinatal HIV infection with blood pressure and hypertension among youth. This research was presented at the pediatric Academic Society meeting as many of you know, human immunodeficiency virus or HIV is an infection that weakens the immune system and in advanced stages leads to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. Between the late 1970s, when the HIV epidemic began to the early 1990s, almost 15,000 Children in the United States were born with Perrin Italy acquired HIV infection. This means they became infected with the virus while they were either in the room or during childbirth. Thankfully since then, the number of Children with perinatal HIV infection has decreased dramatically to less than 200 per year, but this has not yet been eliminated. Now. When people think about the complications of HIV, many think about infections or other problems stemming from having a weakened immune system, but HIV is also associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular disease. Risk factors. In fact, adults and Children living with HIV have more diabetes and higher cholesterol than those without HIV and adults with HIV have more hypertension and heart disease. What we don't yet know though, is how HIV infection affects blood pressuring Children. We aim to answer this question by analyzing data obtained in the pediatric HIV AIDS forward study for the fact study. The fact study is a prospective study conducted at 15 sites in the United States with the goal of investigating the impact of HIV infection and antiretroviral treatment on youth. So Children who were perinatal Lee infected with HIV and Children who were exposed to HIV in Utero but ultimately uninfected, were enrolled between 7-16 years of age and followed each year. These annual assessments included blood pressure measurements, imaging and laboratory evaluations. In our study, there were 673 participants who had blood pressure measurements. 447 of those were used, living with HIV 226 of those were exposed but uninfected in our study used with living with HIV were more often black race and non hispanic and they had lower measures of that capacity, meaning they had lower mean weight and lower mean body mass index. They were also shorter in height, systolic blood pressure and hypertension were similar between the groups. The diastolic blood pressure was lower pre adolescents living with HIV than the youth were exposed but uninfected. Before starting our study, we thought that the degree of adequacy and age might modify or impact how HIV associates with blood pressure. However, our analyses did not support this. So those two variables were included as can founders in our analysis and what we ultimately found was that in the least fully adjusted models, it seemed as though HIV infection was associated with lower diastolic blood pressure and lower odds of having a hypertensive blood pressure. However, when we accounted for degree of incapacity by including body mass index, there was no longer an association between HIV infection and blood pressure and use. These results suggest that at capacity may explain the observed association between HIV infection and blood pressure among you really emphasized the importance of lifestyle counseling for cardiovascular disease prevention. Even among our most vulnerable youth. I'd like to thank the study participants, the clinical sites, the facts. Community advisory ports for making this study possible. Thank you very much.