The Relationship between AIDS and HIV

Single Source Outbreak of Pediatric AIDS

Other researchers have used molecular epidemiology to find a single source of HIV for an outbreak of pediatric AIDS cases in Russia. In that country between 1988 and 1990, over 250 children were infected with HIV after exposure to non-sterile needles. By June 1994, 43 of these children had died of AIDS (Irova et al., 1993). In a recent report on 22 of these children from two hospitals, 12 had developed AIDS. Molecular analysis of HIV isolates from all 22 children showed the isolates to be very closely related, confirming epidemiological data that these two outbreaks resulted from a single source: an infant born to an HIV-infected mother whose husband was infected in central Africa (Bobkov et al., 1994).