Ann Infect Dis Epidemiol | Volume 4, Issue 2 | Research Article | Open Access
Abhishek Singh Nayyar*
Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, India
*Correspondance to: Abhishek Singh Nayyar
Fulltext PDFContext and Aim: The adverse effects of Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) started to be identified through compromised physiologic functions in various systems and organs much later after its advent in the 1990s. Several studies and various authors have illustrated the therapeutic effects of the drug therapy while simultaneously leading to a plethora of associated adverse effects and chronic systemic diseases leading to changes in the craniofacial growth and development, however, there has been a relative dearth of such studies on the HIV infected/AIDS patients. The present study was planned to analyze the craniofacial morphology in child patients and adolescents by evaluating the skeletal cephalometric profile of the HIV infected patients in this age group and comparing them with the normo-reactive controls. Materials and Methods: The present study was a planned case-control study which included 25 HIV positive adolescent patients aged between 10 and 18 years (the study group) who were compared with 25 age and sex matched normo-reactive adolescent controls (the control group). All the patients had been HIV infected via vertical transmission with positive serology confirmed in 2 different tests and had been kept on HAART since they were born. The diagnostic aids used for orthodontic documentation included facial photographs, digital Orthopantomographs (OPGs), lateral tele-radiographs and study models. Statistical Analysis Used: The data was analyzed by using the Epi info software while Bartlett test was performed to verify the homogeneity of the variances (p=0.05). For variables without a normal distribution, Wilcoxon test was applied. To determine the reliability of the agreement between 2 measurement methodologies, intra-class correlation coefficient test was used for the conduct of statistical analysis. p<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: In the 10-to-12 year age group, positions of maxilla and mandible in the study group were found to be retruded in relation to the skull base when compared with the control group. Also, the growth pattern in the study group was seen more horizontal with effective size of the bone bases increased than as seen for the control group. In the 13-to-15 and 16-to-18 year age groups, maxilla was retruded slightly while the mandible was found to be protruded in the study group in relation to the skull base than as compared with the control group. Also, the former had a decreased effective size of the maxillary bone with an increased effective size of the mandible than the latter group in the 13-to-15 year age group, though; the effective mandibular size was similar between the 2 groups in the 16-to-18 year age group. Furthermore, in the 13-to-15 year age group, growth patterns were almost similar in both the study and the control groups while the growth pattern was more horizontal in the study group than in the control group in the 16-to-18 year age group. Conclusion: The results of the present study led to the conclusion that most of the measurements in the HIV-infected adolescents were found to be similar to the ones obtained for the normo-reactive controls, although, the study results highlighted the significance of further studies to be conducted in this regard, especially, the longitudinal study designs wherein the said variables can be studied on a follow-up basis in longitudinal studies to have an idea of the exact changes observed and their pattern in the included groups.
Craniofacial morphology; HIV-positive adolescents; HAART
Nayyar AS. Craniofacial Morphology of HIV Infected Adolescents Undergoing Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART). Ann Infect Dis Epidemiol. 2019; 4(2): 1042.