Health and Survival of Children HIV-exposed and uninfected (CHEU) in the UK and Europe

Speaker: Laurette Bukasa, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health

Treating pregnant women living with HIV with antiretroviral drugs greatly reduces risk of HIV transmission to her baby. At the same time, the population of children HIV-exposed and uninfected (CHEU) has been growing. These children may be at greater risk of adverse birth and long-term health outcomes. Concerns about the CHEU population are largely based on exposure to HIV and antiretroviral drugs with both known and unknown safety profiles in their critical period of development (from conception to 2 years).  Research on the effect of these exposures is relatively limited in general, but particularly from high income settings.  

The aim of my PhD is to explore how exposures in early life affect birth, cancer, and mortality outcomes in CHEU born in the UK and Europe. I will use data from a UK-based surveillance study on pregnant women with a known diagnosis of HIV and their infants, a population-based data-linkage study and pooled European data from a multi-cohort collaboration to address my research questions.