Background: According World Health Organization (WHO) guidance on the treatment of HIV infected children, children should be treated with antiretroviral therapy (ART) as soon as they are diagnosed with HIV infection. Even in that case, we found in Vietnam up to 21% of HIV infected children suffer from treatment failure a manifested by reduced immune system and increased HIV viral load (according to WHO criteria). We hypothesized that the ability to response to ART treatment could be related to certain extent with the immune status and clinical markers of HIV infected children.
 

Aims: To monitor the alteration of clinical, subclinical markers during the course of treatment.

Methods: The study was designed as nested case-control study, we selected all treatment failure (TF) subjects (54 children) and 47 matched treatment success (TS) subjects, the results were analyzed using Chi-squared and non-parametric tests.
 

Results: The number of CD4 T cells, opportunistic infections and SGPT/ALT levels during treatment were correlated with the ability to respond to treatment in HIV-infected children. In addition, the responders also recoverd better in terms of immunological and other biological markers including hemoglobin, platelets, and liver enzymes than non-responders.
 

Conclusion: The results showed that improvement of CD4 cell numbers, and reduced levels of liver enzymes SGOT / SGPT can be associated with good response to treatment. Therefore, monitoring these markers during the treatment can be beneficial in prognosis the treatment response.