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. 2008 Oct;79(4):558-60.

Filarial/human immunodeficiency virus coinfection in urban southern India

Kawsar R Talaat  1 , Nagalingeswaran Kumarasamy, Soumya Swaminathan, Ramya Gopinath, Thomas B Nutman
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Filarial/human immunodeficiency virus coinfection in urban southern India

Kawsar R Talaat et al. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2008 Oct.

Abstract

The disease course of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is often altered by existing or newly acquired coinfections. Treatment or prevention of these concomitant infections often improves the quality and duration of life of HIV-infected persons. The impact of helminth infections on infections with HIV is less clear. However, HIV is frequently most problematic in areas where helminth infections are common. In advance of the widespread distribution of drugs for elimination of lymphatic filariasis, we assessed the prevalence of active Wuchereria bancrofti infection among HIV-positive patients in Chennai, India at two time points separated by four years. We found that the overall prevalence of W. bancrofti infections among HIV-positive persons was 5-9.5%, and there were no quantitative differences in circulating filarial antigen levels between HIV-positive and HIV-negative filarial-infected patients.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclaimer: None of the authors have any conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A, Filarial antigen-positive sera in total number of sera positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) tested, by year. The gray bars represent percentages that were filarial antigen positive within the total number of sera tested. B, Filarial antigen levels by detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in HIV-negative and HIV-positive persons. The bar in the center represents the median and each circle represents an individual patient.
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