Get tested for HIV if you are pregnant

Mother-to-child transmission of HIV (MTCT) is the spread of HIV from an HIV-infected woman to her child during pregnancy, childbirth (labour and delivery), or breastfeeding (through breast milk).
Mother-to-child transmission is the most common way that children become infected with HIV.
•The goal of ART is to reduce the amount of HIV in your body An HIV-positive mother can transmit HIV to her baby in three ways: During pregnancy, vaginal childbirth or breastfeeding. Fortunately, if you are HIV-positive, treatment with a combination of HIV medicines (called antiretroviral therapy or ART) can improve your health and greatly lower the chance that you will pass HIV to your baby before, during, or after birth. The treatment is most effective for preventing HIV transmission to babies when started as early as possible during pregnancy.
However, there are still great a benefit to begin treatment even during labour or shortly after the baby is born.

HIV screen test
Get tested for HIV when you are planning a pregnancy or as soon as possible after you find out you are pregnant, even if you have been tested before.
Some women need to receive a second HIV test in their third trimester if they meet certain criteria, such as continuing to engage in behaviours that put you at high risk for getting HIV. Not all health care facilities offer an automatic HIV test for pregnant women.
Be sure to request one if it isn’t offered. Some women go into labour before they have been tested.
If a pregnant woman goes into labor without having had an HIV test, she may be given a rapid HIV test in the labour and delivery room.
That way, if the test is positive, the doctors can work with her to help prevent passing HIV to the baby.

HIV transmission before birth
If you are HIV-positive and pregnant, you can greatly lower your risk of passing HIV to your baby and protect your own health by taking ART during pregnancy, labour, and delivery.
The goal of ART is to reduce the amount of HIV in your body to an undetectable level (called an undetectable viral load). As a pregnant woman, you can safely use many HIV medicines during pregnancy.
Talk to your health care provider about the benefits and risks of specific HIV medicines when choosing an HIV regimen to use during pregnancy.
And if you are already on ART, don’t stop taking your medicine. It is important to stay on treatment to protect your health and prevent passing HIV to your baby.
But your HIV regimen may change during pregnancy because pregnancy can affect how the body processes medicine.
Work closely with your health care provider to find an HIV regimen that is right for you and always talk to your provider before making any changes.

Delivery options
Also talk to your health care provider about your delivery options. A scheduled Cesarean delivery (C-section) at 38 weeks of pregnancy is recommended to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission for women with a high or unknown HIV viral load near the time of delivery.
All decisions regarding the use of HIV medicines during childbirth and the choice of a cesarean delivery are made jointly by a woman and her health care providers, and depend on the woman’s individual situation.

Prevention after birth
If you are HIV-positive, your baby will receive a special drug for six weeks after birth. This drug is intended to protect the baby from infection with any HIV that passed from you during childbirth.
Your baby will be tested several times over the course of six months to determine whether the baby has HIV. If testing shows that the baby does have HIV, the baby will be switched to ART.

Genes store memories of heart attack episodes

Heredity and environmental factors influence our risk of cardiovascular disease, says a new study, by researchers at Uppsala University that shows that the memory of a heart attack can be stored in our genes through epigenetic changes.

According to the results published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics, we inherit our genes from our parents at birth but during our lifetime, chemical modifications of DNA that turn off or on our genes, so-called epigenetic changes, occur.

These changes can lead to the development of various diseases. In the current study, the researchers examined epigenetic changes in people who have had a previous heart attack.

Åsa Johansson, a researcher at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, who led the study explains: “During a heart attack the body signals by activating certain genes. This mechanism protects the tissue during the acute phase of the disease, and restores the body after the heart attack. It is therefore likely that it also occurs epigenetic changes associated a heart attack”.

Results of the study showed that there are many epigenetic changes in individuals who had experienced a heart attack. Several of these changes are in genes that are linked to cardiovascular disease.

However it was not possible to determine whether these differences had contributed to the development of the disease, or if they live on as a memory of gene activation associated with the heart attack.

Johansson hopes the new results should contribute to increasing the knowledge of the importance of epigenetic in the clinical picture of a heart attack, which in the long run could lead to better drugs and treatments.