Hepatitis C virus prevalence and serotypes associated with HIV in The Gambia

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) serotypes are important in the epidemiology and pathogenesis of HCV-related disease, but little is known of this connection in West Africa. Coinfection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. This study aims to determine the prevalence of HCV and its serotypes associated with HIV in The Gambia. A total of 1500 individuals referred to the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital for HIV serology between July and December, 2002 were screened for antibodies to HIV and subsequently for HCV, and seropositive samples were typed. This study shows HIV and HCV prevalence of 6.7% and 1.6%, respectively, with a co-infection rate of 0.6%. Serotype 2 showed the highest prevalence (58.1%), followed by serotype 1 (19.4%). Prevalence of HCV serotype 3 was 6.5% and five samples were untypeable. Co-infection of HIV-1 with HCV serotype 1 showed a prevalence of 44.4%, and with HCV serotype 2 of 33.3%. The findings support the evidence to suggest the West African subregion as the origin of HCV serotype 2. It also demonstrates the need for routine HCV screening of HIV-infected persons and blood donations, and calls for further studies to elucidate the sources of the HCV virus.

Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV-1 Coinfection in Two Informal Urban Settlements in Nairobi, Kenya

“…These findings are similar with study done in Aga Khan University hospital on HIV-1 positive patients attending the HIV-1 clinic whereby 1% of the patients were found to be co-infected with HIV-1 and HCV [10]. These findings also concur in studies done in Zambia (2.2%), Gambia (0.6%) and Cote d’voire (1.2%) [28,29,30]. However, higher rates of HIV/HCV coinfection are reported in studies done in Nigeria (4.8%) and Malawi (5.7%) [31,32, 33].…”

Prevalence of hepatitis B and C viral co-infections among HIV-1 infected individuals in Nairobi, Kenya

“…The HIV/HBV co infection rates (6%) detected in this study was found to be consistent with findings from other studies carried out in Kenya [22,50], Zambia [19,34], Cote d’ Ivore [24], Malawi [25], Nigeria [38], Ethiopia [41] and South Africa [39]. However, these findings were low compared to those previous obtained in Kenya (55.8%) among liver failure patients [43,44] Tanzania [32,51], Zambia [47], Botswana [42], Malawi [27], Nigeria [28,42,46,48], Ethiopia [40], Argentina [34] South Africa [37,40] (Table  3).…”

“…These findings were similar to those obtained previously in Kenya [23,25], Nigeria [53] and Ethiopia [29] indicating a maintained low rates of these trio infections [22,23,25,35,36] (Table  3). …”

“…about 5% [20,21]. Compared to previous studies in Kenya on similar populations, these findings were contrarily higher 1.1% [22]; 0.7% [23], including those from Zambia (2.2%) [19], Cote d’voire (1.2%) [24], Gambia (0.6%) [25], Malawi (5.7%) [26,27], Nigeria (4.8%) [28], Rwanda (4.9%) [29], Senegal (1.6%) [30] Uganda (0.6%) [31] and Zimbabwe (0.8%) [31] (Table  3). The higher rates could probably due to increased free access to antiretroviral therapy and diverse study subjects.…”