Abstract

BELLO CORREDOR, Marité et al. Hepatitis C virus in HIV-positive patients. Rev Cubana Med Trop [online]. 2008, vol.60, n.3. ISSN 0375-0760.

BACKGROUND: the infection produced by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a world health problem. The HCV and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) share communicable ways and some epidemiological characteristics; in coinfected HCV/HIV patients, the behavior and the evolution of the infection in HIV patients is accelerated. OBJETIVES: to contribute to the expansion of knowledge on HCV infection in HIV-positive patients; to determine the anti-HCV prevalence in a group of HIV-positive patients; to associate the detection of the RNA-HCV with the HIV or AIDS stages in these patients and with the sex. METHODS: one thousand and sixty five serum samples from HIV-positive patients were examined in the National Reference Laboratory of Viral Hepatitis of "Pedro Kourí" Institute of Tropical Medicine during 2007. The used techniques were: antibodies to HCV determination using the UMELISA HCV and determination HCV RNA by UMELOSA HCV (Inmunoassay Center). RESULTS: in HIV-positive patients, 14.27 % was positive to anti-HVC; besides, a group of them with aminotransferase count above the normal values was applied UMELOSA, thus detecting a high percent (77.7 %) of positivity to HCV RNA, this results is in line with those reported in international literature. Almost 80 % of the patients that presented with HCV replication were already in the AIDS phase. The male sex was predominant. CONCLUSIONS: these results confirmed the weight of the HCV infection in HIV-positive patients.

Keywords : HCV/HIV coinfection; HCV/aids; HCV/HIV/sex.