The prevalence of HIV among adults with pulmonary TB at a population level in Zambia

Abstract

BackgroundTuberculosis and HIV co-infection is one of the main drivers of poor outcome for both diseases in Zambia. HIV infection has been found to predict TB infection/disease and TB has been reported as a major cause of death among individuals with HIV. Improving case detection of TB/HIV co-infection has the potential to lead to early treatment of both conditions and can impact positively on treatment outcomes. This study was conducted in order to determine the HIV prevalence among adults with tuberculosis in a national prevalence survey setting in Zambia, 2013–2014.MethodsA countrywide cross sectional survey was conducted in 2013/2014 using stratified cluster sampling, proportional to population size for rural and urban populations. Each of the 66 countrywide clusters represented one census supervisory area with cluster size averaging 825 individuals. Socio-demographic characteristics were collected during a household visit by trained survey staff. A standard symptom-screening questionnaire was administered to 46,099 eligible individuals across all clusters, followed by chest x-ray reading for all eligible. Those symptomatic or with x-ray abnormalities were confirmed or ruled out as TB case by either liquid culture or Xpert MTBRif performed at the three central reference laboratories. HIV testing was offered to all participants at the survey site following the national testing algorithm with rapid tests. The prevalence was expressed as the proportion of HIV among TB cases with 95% confidence limits.ResultsA total of 265/6123 (4.3%) participants were confirmed of having tuberculosis. Thirty-six of 151 TB survey cases who accepted HIV testing were HIV-seropositive (23.8%; 95% CI 17.2–31.4). The mean age of the TB/HIV cases was 37.6 years (range 24–70). The majority of the TB/HIV cases had some chest x-ray abnormality (88.9%); were smear positive (50.0%), and/or had a positive culture result (94.4%). None of the 36 detected TB/HIV cases were already on TB treatment, and 5/36 (13.9%) had a previous history of TB treatment. The proportion of TB/HIV was higher in urban than in the rural clusters. The HIV status was unknown for 114/265 (43.0%) of the TB cases.ConclusionsThe TB/HIV prevalence in the general population was found to be lower than what is routinely reported as incident TB/HIV cases at facility level. However; the TB/HIV co-infection was higher in areas with higher TB prevalence. Innovative and effective strategies for ensuring TB/HIV co-infected individuals are detected and treated early are required.

Bayesian Modeling of Spatiotemporal patterns of TB-HIV co-infection risk in Kenya

“…Similarly, the co-infection risk was higher for the same age bracket, which implied that co-infection was more common in the sexually active age group. These findings were contrary to the findings by (32) and (29) who observed that high rates of TB-HIV co-infections were in younger patients (<15 years of age) but consistent to several other studies (30,(33)(34)(35)(36). The study also revealed that a larger proportion of the HIV co-infected cases had extra-pulmonary TB conforming to (37) and (34) who found that the risk of extrapulmonary TB was higher in HIV co-infected cases majorly because of delayed diagnosis especially for the sputum smear-negative…”

Bayesian modeling of spatiotemporal patterns of TB-HIV co-infection risk in Kenya

“…Similarly, the co-infection risk was higher for the same age bracket, which implied that co-infection was more common in the sexually active age group. These findings were contrary to the findings by [32] and [29] who observed that high rates of TB-HIV co-infections were in younger patients (< 15 years of age) but consistent with several other studies [30, 33–36]. The study also revealed that a larger proportion of the HIV co-infected cases had extra-pulmonary TB conforming to [37] and [34] who found that the risk of extra-pulmonary TB was higher in HIV co-infected cases majorly because of delayed diagnosis especially for the sputum smear-negative.…”

Risk Factors for Occupational Transmission of Tuberculosis among Healthcare Workers in Zambia

“…The highest burden of TB, as well as MDR-and XDR-TB has been noted in resource-constrained countries, regions also experiencing a TB/HIV co-epidemic [15,18,19,20]. Several risk factors have been associated with occupational transmission of TB in HCWs, summarised in Table 1.…”

“…Of uttermost importance is the high proportion of TB patients with a known HIV status (95%) within the country in 2018 [15], which offers a better prognosis for these patients. The prevalence of HIV among people aged between 15 and 49 years in Zambia is estimated to be 11.3% and most HCWs fall within this age range in Zambia [19,20], HIV being a major risk factor for TB increases the risk of occupational transmission of TB in HIV positive HCWs. Further the risk of acquiring HIV is heightened in HCWs due to occupational exposure to blood borne pathogens [22].…”

“…The increase in lifestyle diseases in Africa, such as diabetes mellitus (DM), has also been demonstrated to be a further driver in progression of TB in the general population and in HCWs [19,21,23]. It has been noted that individuals with DM are 3 times more likely to develop tuberculosis [24,25].…”