Our goal was to determine the prevalence of, and risk factors associated with, syphilis in HIV-infected patients who attend an AIDS outpatient clinic in Vitoria, Brazil. We conducted a cross-sectional study—including interviews for demographic, behavioral, and clinical characteristics—and blood collection (venipuncture and fingerstick) for VDRL and treponemal tests (rapid test) in a total of 438 patients. The mean age was 43.0 years (SD = 11), and mean years of school was 8.1 (SD = 4.2). The prevalence of syphilis was 5.3% (95% CI, 3.3%–7.3%). The treponemal test was positive in 18.9% of participants. In multivariate analysis, prevalent syphilis infection was independently associated with male gender (AOR 4.6, 95% CI, 1.1–20.0), a history of male-male sex (AOR 1.8, 95% CI, 1.6–4.1), current use of antiretroviral therapy (AOR 5.5, 95% CI, 1.7–16.7), and history of treated syphilis infection (AOR 5.5, 95% CI, 2.0–15.8). Syphilis prevalence was high in patients living with HIV/AIDS who attend an AIDS clinic; therefore, routine STI counseling and screening should be included in their care.

Genetic variability of human immunodeficiency virus type - 1(HIV-1) is a potential threat for both diagnosis and treatment of HIV/AIDS, as well as the development of effective vaccines. Up to now, HIV subtypes circulating among HIV-positive patients in the state of Espírito Santo were not known. In the present study, blood samples from 100 therapy-naïve HIV-1 infected patients were collected and the HIV subtype was determined through the Heteroduplex Mobility Assay (HMA). Ninety-seven out of 100 studied samples were subtyped by HMA, 73 samples (75.2%) were from subtype B, 9 (9.3%) from subtype F, 3 (3.1%) from subtype C, 6 (6.2%) Benv/Fgag, and another 6 (6.2%) Fenv/Bgag, what suggests that recombinant viruses were present in the studied samples. Twenty-eight percent of the subtype B samples were represented by the Brazilian B" subtype, which were identified by RFLP with Fok I. Data presented here demonstrate that the epidemiological characteristics of the HIV epidemic in the state of Espírito Santo are similar to those from the other Southeastern states and helped to better understand the genetic polymorphism of HIV in Brazil

The resistance mutational profile of Brazilian patients failing antiretroviral therapy is quite variable, depending on the city where patients were tested. This variation likely reflects distinctive choice of antiretrovirals drugs to initiate therapy, adherence to specific drugs, or circulating HIV-1 strains. Overall, etravirine and DRV/r remain as the most active drugs.

The present study was conducted to investigate a possible correlation between plasma (PVL)