Pathology of placenta in HIV infection.

The spectrum of HIV pathological lesions encountered in the placenta has not been well documented in the literature. To address this issue, we examined 51 placentae of HIV positive mothers, prospectively over a one year period and compared the pathology of the cases treated with zidovudine (AZT) or nevirapine (NVP) with untreated cases. We also correlated the placental pathology with the HIV status of the neonates. The maternal to child transmission rate was 4.44%. A lower fetal / placental weight ratio was seen in normal birth weight neonates compared to low birth weight neonates. No significant gross lesions were encountered and the placental disc did not show any significant decrease in dimensions. The commonest inflammatory lesion seen was chorio-amnionitis 31.37% and the commonest non-inflammatory lesion was cytotrophoblastic hyperplasia 76.47%. There was no significant decrease in the incidence of the lesions following anti-retroviral therapy in our study, and we did not find any correlation between the incidence of placental lesions and the HIV status of the newborn.