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After being diagnosed with HIV in a 4 year old boy in Portugal, the biggest question was how he had contracted the infection.
Her mother, for example, did not have it (HIV-positive women can pass the virus to babies). An investigation revealed a surprising source: blisters on the skin of the boy's father.
Although it is known that a mother can transmit HIV to her child during pregnancy and childbirth, father's transmission to the child is very rare. The new report, published September 20 in AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, describes one of the few documented cases of this phenomenon, the authors said.
"Although this type of HIV transmission event from father to son is rare, it is important for the general public to realize that [in people with HIV,] HIV is present in most body fluids and can be transmitted atypically and unexpectedly, "said Thomas Hope, editor of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, who was not involved in the study.
After the child was diagnosed with HIV at the age of 4, the authorities initiated a criminal investigation to determine if the child was a victim of sexual abuse. As part of the investigation, the researchers wanted to determine how the boy had the infection and when the transmission had occurred. [27 Oddest Medical Cases]
The boy was born in April 2009. Shortly after his birth, his father was diagnosed with HIV. At the time, the father also had chickenpox and syphilis and was undergoing treatment for both. As a result of the father's infections, the man developed large blisters all over the body that leaked the fluid abundantly, according to the report. (Varicella and syphilis can cause skin lesions.)
The researchers took blood samples from the father and son and analyzed the genetic material of the strain of HIV infecting each.
According to their analysis, the researchers determined that the father had been infected with HIV in early 2009 and that he had infected his son shortly after the birth of the child.
The criminal investigation also found no evidence of sexual abuse.
The researchers hypothesized that the child was infected during the first days of his life by coming into contact with the fluids from the father's blisters. At the beginning of the father's infection, there would have been a large amount of HIV virus in his body, which could have made the liquid of blisters very contagious.
"The main message of our article is that HIV can be transmitted through the liquid of at least some types of blisters," said writer Nuno Taveira, a professor of HIV research at the University of Nairobi. Institute for Research on Drugs of the University of Lisbon. Previously, Taveira and his colleagues had isolated HIV from the liquid of similar skin blisters. But he noted that HIV is only present in the vesicant fluid at dangerous levels (high enough to cause the spread of the disease) when a person has high levels of virus in the body. blood. This can occur during the early stages of HIV infection and if the infection is not treated.
In the end, no criminal charges were filed in the case. "Our investigation helped the prosecution to dismiss the case without bringing it to justice," Taveira told Live Science.
The researchers noted that although rare, other cases of HIV transmission between adults and children did not appear to be related to sexual abuse or transmission during pregnancy or childbirth. For example, in 1998, researchers also reported a case of HIV transmission from father to child that would be due to the child's exposure to the father's hemorrhagic skin lesions.
And in 2012, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported three cases of HIV in children, attributed to "premastication" or pre-cooking of food before feeding.
Originally published on Science live.
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