Zoe Gotthold, Adam Epstein-Shuman, Godfrey Kigozi, Susanna L. Lamers, Victor Ssempijja, Gabriel Quiros, Michael Martin, M Kate Grabowski, Reinaldo E. Fernández, Larry W Chang, Ronald M Galiwango, Gertrude Nakigozi, S. R. M. Reynolds, Eileen P. Scully, Andrew D. Redd, Oliver Laeyendecker
We analyzed perinatal transmission in a pre-ART Ugandan cohort by maternal HIV-1 subtype and infant sex in 131 mother-child pairs. Among all children, if the mother was infected with subtype A there was a nearly 3-fold increased risk of perinatal transmission as compared to subtype D (RR=2.96, CI=1.46-6.01, p=0.008). When stratifying infants by both sex and maternal subtype, significantly more female (56.3% [9/16]) than male (9.1% [1/11]) infants born to mothers with subtype A were infected (RR = 6.19, CI=0.91-42.12, p=0.02). In contrast, among infants born to mothers with subtype D, transmission rates were comparable across sex (RR=1.59, CI=0.57-4.41, p=0.39).