People with HIV who wish to breastfeed their infants should have sustained viral suppression, with a viral load below 50 copies per mL, to have the least risk of transmitting HIV to their baby aside from avoiding breastfeeding altogether, according to a new clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
“The risk of HIV transmission via breastfeeding from a parent with HIV who is receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) and is virally suppressed is estimated to be less than 1%,” Lisa Abuogi, MD, an associate professor of pediatric infectious disease at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and her colleagues wrote in Pediatrics. For people living with HIV in the United States, however, the AAP recommends that “avoidance of breastfeeding is the only infant feeding option with 0% risk of HIV transmission.”
The authors go on to suggest that pediatricians “be prepared to offer a family-centered, nonjudgmental, harm reduction approach” to support people with HIV who do want to breastfeed and have sustained viral suppression. Parents with HIV who are not on ART or who do not have adequate viral suppression should be advised against breastfeeding, the report states. Members of the AAP Committee on Pediatric and Adolescent HIV and of the AAP Section on Breastfeeding coauthored the clinical report.
“The new guidelines emphasize the importance of patient-centered counseling as the foundation for shared decision-making, allowing patients and pediatric providers to make feeding decisions together and for the first time really giving support to people with HIV in the U.S. who want to breastfeed,” Danna Biala, MD, MS, an attending pediatrician at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told MDedge News.
Dr. Biala was not involved in the development of the report, but she said the AAP’s guidance reflects the recent shift in the stance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding breastfeeding among people who are HIV+. Recommendations from the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were updated in 2023.
“I’m glad that the AAP is putting out guidelines on infant feeding for people with HIV,” Dr. Biala said. “For so long in the U.S., pediatricians have been advising all mothers with HIV to avoid breastfeeding, believing that the risk of transmission outweighed the benefits of breastfeeding.”
The updated guidance from HHS in 2023 “was revolutionary in supporting people with HIV in low-risk situations who want to breastfeed,” Dr. Biala said, but “clear protocols for monitoring and follow-up were not in place,” which these AAP guidelines help address.
Prior Discordance Between Global, U.S. Guidance
An estimated 5,000 people with HIV give birth each year in the United States, and up to one third of pregnant people with HIV may be unaware of their HIV status, the AAP report notes. Pediatric healthcare professionals in the United States therefore need to be aware of recommendations related to HIV testing of pregnant people and of counseling the feeding of infants exposed to HIV. The report recommends opt-out HIV testing at the first prenatal visit and then possibly retesting in the third trimester in areas with high HIV incidence or for people at high risk for HIV or with signs or symptoms of acute HIV infection.
The report also highlights the health benefits of breastfeeding to both the infant and the breastfeeding parent, but notes the CDC’s historical recommendation against breastfeeding for people who are HIV+. The WHO, meanwhile, began recommending in 2016 that infants be breastfed through 12 to 24 months old if the parent was on ART and/or the infant was receiving antiretroviral (ARV) prophylaxis, since research showed those treatments were effective in reducing transmission risk.
Still, an estimated 30% of perinatal HIV transmission occurs via breastfeeding worldwide, primarily from people with HIV who are not on ART or are not adequately virally suppressed. Without parental ART or infant ARV prophylaxis, HIV transmission risk to infants via breastfeeding is highest, about 5%-6%, in the first 4-6 weeks of life. Risk then declines to about 0.9% a month thereafter. The AAP report goes on to describe factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of transmission during breastfeeding, but it notes that neither ART in the breastfeeding person nor ARV prophylaxis in the infant completely eliminates the risk of HIV transmission during breastfeeding. There have been rare cases where transmission occurred despite viral suppression in the person with HIV.
Among the reasons people with HIV have expressed a desire to breastfeed are wanting to bond with their infant, wanting to provide optimal nutrition and health benefits to their baby, and meeting cultural expectations, including the desire not to disclose their HIV infection status to family or friends by virtue of not breastfeeding.
“Among immigrant and refugee populations, the discordance between infant feeding guidelines in the United States and their country of birth may result in confusion, especially among parents who breastfed previous infants,” the AAP report also notes. Further, not breastfeeding could compound health disparities already more likely to be present among those living with HIV.
Discussions about infant feeding with parents with HIV should therefore “begin as early as possible and involve a multidisciplinary team that might include the pediatric primary care provider (once identified), a pediatric HIV expert, the breastfeeding parent’s HIV care and obstetric providers, and lactation consultants,” the report states. “The parent’s motivations for breastfeeding should be explored and counseling provided on the risks and benefits of each feeding option, including breastfeeding, formula feeding, or certified, banked donor human milk.” The statement emphasizes the need for providing counseling in a “non-judgmental, respectful way, recognizing potential drivers for their decisions such as avoidance of stigma, prior experience with breastfeeding, and cultural contributors.”
Clear Recommendations Can Help Providers
The AAP’s statement that “replacement feeding (with formula or certified, banked donor human milk) is the only option that is 100% certain to prevent postnatal transmission of HIV” feels like it takes a “more conservative or discouraging approach” to breastfeeding than the CDC or WHO guidelines, Alissa Parker-Smith, APRN, DNP, CPNP-PC, IBCLC, a nurse practitioner and lactation consultant at PrimaryPlus, a Federally Qualified Health Clinic in Ashland, Kentucky, told MDedge. But she said they do clearly align with the CDC guidelines, and their differences from the WHO guidelines make sense in light of the different populations served by the WHO versus the U.S. agencies.
“Unclean water for formula preparation and a reduced or lack of access to formula in general can lead to many other risks of death for the infant other than the very small risk of HIV infection from breastfeeding from an HIV+ parent,” Ms. Parker-Smith said. “In the U.S. we generally have consistent access to clean water and safe formula as well as social structures to help families have access to formula, so the very small risk of HIV being passed to the infant is far greater than an infant in the U.S. dying as a result of unclean water or formula contamination.”
Ms. Parker-Smith also said the AAP recommendations seem thorough in helping pediatric practitioners counsel and support parents with HIV. “If I had a parent who is HIV+ walk in the door today wanting to breastfeed their infant, the AAP guidelines give me specific steps to make me feel confident in helping that parent breastfeed as safely as possible as well as providing education to assist that parent through the decision process,” she said.
Dr. Biala agreed, noting that the clinical report “very clearly delineates recommendations for different groups of people: those in labor or postpartum with undocumented HIV infection status, pregnant and postpartum people with HIV, those without HIV but at high risk of acquiring it, and those with suspected acute HIV infection while breastfeeding.” Dr. Biala said the report “provides concrete, detailed, and easy-to-follow guidance on comprehensive counseling, strategies to minimize risk of transmission, and infant screening timelines.”
How easily the guidelines can be implemented will depend on the existing resources at different institutions in the United States, Dr. Biala added.
“In hospitals and clinics that have, or could easily have, systems in place to ensure follow-up and regular assessment during breastfeeding, the guidelines could be implemented fairly quickly,” she said. “It might be more challenging in areas with inadequate or limited access to multidisciplinary team members, including HIV care providers and lactation consultants.”
The report did not use external funding, and the authors reported no disclosures. Dr. Abuogi and Ms. Parker-Smith have no disclosures.
This article originally appeared on MDedge.com, part of the Medscape Professional Network.
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