Chih-Cheng Chen a,b , Kwong-Leung Yu a,c , Jung-Der Wang b,d

1. Chih-Cheng Chena,b, Kwong-Leung Yua,c, Jung-Der Wangb,d a Pingtung Christian Hospital, Pingtung, Taiwan b Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene, College of Public Health, NTU, Taiwan c College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan d Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan Body mass index as a major determinant for predicting 5 year survival of children starting on antiretroviral treatment Table 1: Baseline characteristics of 505 children started on antiretroviral therapy according to four body mass index groups at Mzuzu Central Hospital, Malawi BACKGROUND:Since 2004 July, Mzuzu Central Hospital in the northern region of Malawi started to provide free ART to eligible HIV-infected cases in accordance with the national guidelines. AIMS: (1) To calculate the survival rate of children on ART up to 5 years; (2) to assess BMI as a prognostic indicator for these children on ART. METHODS: Data were collected for all patients whose entry ages were less than 15 years of age started on ART. Basic demographic data included age, sex, initial body weight and body height, date and reason for starting ART, WHO clinical stages and outcomes. The outcomes for cases on ART were censored on June 30th, 2009 RESULTS: as Tables and Figure. CONCLUSIONS: Body mass index (BMI) is a good predictor of the survival rates of children on ART. Early nutrition assessment and intervention is important to the management of children with AIDS. Table 2. Cox proportional hazards multivariate analysis of factors predicting mortality in 505 AIDS children on ART at Rainbow Clinic of MCH, Malawi Figure1. The Kaplan-Meier estimates of the survival rates among 4 body mass index (BMI) groups (a). The survival analysis among different WHO clinical stages stratified by BMI <=15 (b) or BMI >15 (c) according to 5 years of follow-up in 505 AIDS children.