Seroprofile, Risk Factors Of Hepatitis B, C, Syphilis And Disease Stage Among Hiv Patients Attending Engineer Hospital, Nyandarua County, Kenya

ABSTRACT

Hepatitis, especially B, C and Syphilis co infections are very common among HIV infected individuals and their manifestation is a growing public health concern. These diseases share similar modes of transmission with HIV. However, at earlier stages these infections are myriads that mirrors one another hence they are easily missed. Due to this particular challenge, the infection prevalence of the cases is not fully known in most areas of the country, with rural settings of Nyandarua being one of them. This study was therefore aimed at determining the Seroprofile, risk factors of hepatitis B, C, Syphilis and disease stage of HIV infected individuals attending HIV care clinic. A hospital based cross sectional study was conducted and sociodemographic data collected using a well-structured questionnaire during the period of between July and September 2018. A total of 385 patients consisting of 263(68.3%) female and 122(31.7%) male were consecutively sampled during patients visit. The blood samples were screened for antibodies against HBV (HBsAg), HCV (anti HCV) and Syphilis (anti syphilis) using rapid test strips (CTK Biotech USA test strips) and confirmed by ELISA (cobas analyser). Their CD4 counts were also estimated using CyFlow® Counter technique (Sysmex Partec analyzer machine). From the analysis, the overall prevalence of co infections was HBV (3.9%), HCV (0.78%) and Syphilis (3.1%) among HIV patients attending comprehensive care clinic. The farmers, primary education level, age of 45-54 years, marital status and CD4 levels < 200 count/ul had high exposures of these co infections. However gender (χ 2= 8.822, p = 0.008) was found to significantly be associated with co infections of HBV. Equally, CD4 levels had a significant relationship with age (χ 2= 35.096, p = 0.028) and treatment (χ 2= 34.778, p = 0.010).The overall mean of patients CD4 levels were 227 count/ul and this indicates the advanced stage of immunosuppression.Most of the patients had low detectable levels of HIV viral load (99%) with 1% high detectable level.However, HIV viral load had no significant relationship with CD4 levels (χ 2= 0.878, p = 0.831).The rates of HBV and HCV infections were found to be lower than the national prevalence while Syphilis was found to be higher.The age, occupation, education level, marital status and CD4 T cells levels influenced the rates of HBV, HCV and Syphilis exposures although they were not significant at p ≤ 0.05. As the HIV/HBV/HCV/Syphilis co infections are clinically consequential in people living with human immunodeficiency virus/Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, there is need for constant screening of the population for these particular infections since they are common.