Improved treatment allowing more HIV-positive women to get pregnant: study
Lisa Partridge was 14 when she learned she was HIV-positive.
The teenager living in Comox, B.C., underwent a tainted blood transfusion when she was an infant in Romania. When she fell terribly ill at age one, her distraught parents searched for a cause until a doctor finally recommended HIV testing.
She tested positive. For the next 13 years, she took a daily cocktail of pills that she believed were for a congenital heart defect, from which she also suffers. When her parents told her the truth, she was stunned.
“I kind of remember freaking out a little bit and being like, ‘Oh my God,’” recalled Partridge, now 27. “But then I did more research into it and it’s not as bad as people thought it was.”
Partridge’s story speaks to the enormous medical and social
strides that have been made since HIV was first identified in the 1980s. Antiretroviral therapy has suppressed the virus in her system, allowing her to lead a healthy life without fear of transmitting HIV to others, and she has rarely encountered stigma from romantic interests, friends or coworkers.
So her dream of starting a family with her husband has never been in doubt. Their daughter, Adrianna, was born healthy and HIV-free four years ago, and the “rambunctious little thing” has been keeping her mom busy.
“I thought I wanted two (kids) and I had one and I think I’m OK with that,” said Partridge with a laugh.
New research shows improved treatment is allowing more Canadian women living with HIV to get pregnant. Nearly 25 per cent of women reported a pregnancy after an HIV diagnosis, says the study from the Canadian HIV Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study, supported by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
Angela Kaida, a co-author and a Canada research chair in global perspectives on HIV and sexual and reproductive health at Simon Fraser University, said HIV-positive women are living healthier and longer lives when properly treated.
“An HIV diagnosis doesn’t preclude you from motherhood and that experience can be healthy, can be happy, can be wonderful and that’s a reality that we didn’t foresee in the earlier days of this epidemic,” she said.
In British Columbia, among pregnant women living with HIV who are successfully engaged in treatment, there has not been a single HIV transmission from a mother to child in over 20 years, said Kaida.
One major reason for that impressive statistic is the hard work of the Oak Tree Clinic, the Vancouver-based provincial referral centre for women living with HIV and their families, said co-author Kate Salters.
“We are really leading the charge in that capacity,” said Salters, who is based at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.