Pregnancy outcomes in women with advanced HIV infection in Italy

Pregnancy has been associated with a low risk of HIV disease progression. Most pregnancies with HIV currently involve women who have not experienced AIDS-defining events, and are clinically classified as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) groups A or B. We evaluated the main maternal outcomes among pregnant women with more advanced HIV disease, defined by CDC-C disease stage. Data from the Italian National Program on Surveillance on Antiretroviral Treatment in Pregnancy were used. A total of 566 HIV-infected mothers, 515 in stage A or B (CDC-AB group) and 51 in stage C (CDC-C group) were evaluated. The two groups had similar baseline characteristics. No differences were found …

Body Mass Index and Weight Gain in Pregnant Women With HIV: A National Study in Italy.

Although most of the women (69.4%) had a normal BMI at start of pregnancy, only 37% had an adequate weight gain during pregnancy. Inadequate body weight gain was more common (44.8%) than excessive weight gain (18.2%), but 40% of overweight women and 50% of obese women had an excessive weight gain in pregnancy, with about 9% of the women in these categories gaining >18 kg during pregnancy (Table 1). Only 1.9% of the women had a vaginal delivery; elective and nonelective cesarean deliveries accounted for 81.3% and 16.7% of deliveries, respectively. Compared to underweight/normal women, overweight/obese women had similar occurrences of preterm delivery (23.4% vs 22.7%, P = .871), significantly…

Chronic Administration of Slow-Release Nifedipine Improves Arterial Compliance in Elderly Hypertensives with Systolic Hypertension