Background:Diagnosis for HIV in infants is hard to determine, particularly in limited-
resource areas. A delay in the diagnosis of HIV-infected infants will lead to high morbidity
and mortality. The purpose of this project is to construct a model of an HIV-positive infant and develop
a useful and practical scoring system to estimate the likelihood of mother-to-child transmission
that can be applied in the field.Methods:A cross-sectional study on 100 subjects through medical records of infants born to
HIV-infected mothers was conducted at four hospitals and one community health center. Several
models of risk prediction scores of HIV-infected infants were then made. Furthermore, the performed
validation was performed on 20 subjects of infants born to mothers with HIV in three hospitals
by comparing the scoring system and the result of the PCR RNA examination performed at
the age of 6 weeks old.Results:The risk of HIV-infected infants was higher in mothers who did not receive ARV
through PMTCT programs (OR 33.6; 95% CI 4.0 to 282.2), pulmonary TB infection (OR 5.1;
IK95% 1.6 to 16.0) and vaginal delivery (OR 9.2; IK95 2.2 to 38.0%). Two models can predict
the occurrence of infected HIV infants effectively. Model 1 consists of maternal age, maternal
ARVs, lung TB infection, gestational age, mode of delivery, and sex of the infants with sensitivity
and specificity of 78.9% and 70.8% (AUC=0.817 [95% CI 0.709 to 0.926]) and likelihood ratio
score of 4. Model 2 consists of ARVs to the mother, pulmonary TB infection, and mode of delivery
with sensitivity and specificity of 73.7% and 86.1%; AUC value of 0.812 (95% CI 0.687 to
0.938) and likelihood ratio of 5. External Validation gave similar results to the Model 2 scoring
system with PCR RNA.Conclusion:The prediction score of HIV-infected infants in Model 2 can be used in newborns of
HIV-positive mothers as an effective and practical risk screening tool for HIV-infected infants before
the gold standard examination by PCR.