Association Between Maternal HIV Stigma Among South Indian Mothers Living with HIV and the CD4 Count of Children

Valerie PhamDo1, Adeline M Nyamathi2, Maria L Ekstrand3,4

  • 1Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. ValerieP@uci.edu.

AIDS and Behavior
|December 13, 2021
PubMed

HIV stigma takes a multidimensional toll on a mother's ability to care for herself and subsequently may impact her ability to care for her child, particularly when mother and child are seroconcordant. A cross-sectional analysis was conducted to examine the association between maternal HIV stigma and child CD4 count in rural India. We assessed 108 mother-child dyads and found that a one-unit increase in community stigma fear decreased child CD4 count by 352 cells (95% CI = - 603, - 102), highlighting the need to develop a better understanding of the consequences of HIV-related stigma on the compounded burden of care in households where mother and child both live with HIV.

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