Maternal factors associated with perinatal HIV-1 transmission: the French Cohort Study: 7 years of follow-up observation. The French Pediatric HIV Infection Study Group.

A nationwide, longitudinal study of infants born to human immunodeficiency virus-seropositive mothers has been under way in France since 1986. After 7 years of follow-up observations, we will update our assessment of the transmission rate in France and analyze, on a larger number of mother-infant pairs, the influence of maternal factors. Among the 848 pairs included in this analysis, the transmission rate was 20.2 +/- 2.7%. The transmission rate has remained stable with time and was not influenced by the mode of delivery, the mode of maternal infection, or the mother's ethnic origin. It was twice as high among the breast-fed infants as among the bottle-fed infants (40 vs. 19%, p 600 CD4+ cells to 43% at counts of 500 and the proportion of CD8+ cells was 40%.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)