Analysis of death causes of 345 cases with HIV/AIDS in Guangdong area / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To analyze the death causes of 345 cases with HIV/AIDS in Guangdong area.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The situations of 345 hospitalized death cases with HIV/AIDS were conducted by retrospective analysis.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>(1)There were total 3406 hospitalized cases with HIV/AIDS in a hospital from January 2001 to December 2011 and 345 cases died, the fatality rate was 10. 13%. Since 2005 the introduction of free anti-viral treatment, the fatality rate of HIV/AIDS declined. The fatality rate of the patients whose CD4+ T lymphocyte counts <200 cells/microl was 14.61% (299/2046) and it was significantly higher than that of patients whose CD4 T lymphocyte counts >or=200 cells/microl (P <0.01). (2) 99.42% of the death cases had more than one kind of opportunistic infections (OI) and there were 924 cases of OI totally. 84. 64% of OI related to the death directly. Fungal infection was the most common in OI, followed by bacterial infection. Most OI occurred in the lungs, mouth, other systemic disseminated diseases, gastrointestine, central nerver system, septicemia, skin. The AIDS defining opportunistic infections such as several pneumonia, disseminated penicilliosis marneffei and CNS infections accounted for 29.65%. Other factors that caused HIV/AIDS death included opportunistic tumors, HIV related disease and non AIDS-related disease accounted for 15.36%. No accepted effective highly active antiretroviral therapy (HARRT) also constituted factors of death. Among cases which accepted HARRT treatment, only 6.96% had the period of treatment over three months.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The fatality rate of end-stage AIDS patients was high and the opportunistic infections was the most important cause of death. Early diagnosis and treatment for opportunistic infections, timely effective HARRT were the key to improve the quality of life of AIDS patients.</p>

Analysis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) subtypes in HIV/HCV co-infected and HCV mono-infected individuals in Guangdong province / 中华肝脏病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore the transmission routes, genotypes/subtypes distribution and genetic character of HCV in HIV/HCV co-infected and HCV mono-infected individuals in Guangdong Province.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Reverse transcription (RT) nested PCR was performed to amplify the HCV NS5B gene region from 95 HIV/HCV co-infected and 99 HCV mono-infected individuals lived in Guangdong province. The PCR products were then sequenced for HCV subtyping. Genetic analysis was done by MEGA4 software.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>(1) HIV/HCV co-infected individuals infected HCV mostly through injection drug use (IDU, 78.9%), the HCV subtypes were identified as 6a (53.7%), 3a (17.9%), 1b (15.8%), 3b (11.6%) and 1a (1.0%) respectively, the genetic distance within subtype 1b was longer than those within other subtypes, the predominant HCV subtype in HIV/HCV co-infected individuals infected through IDU was 6a (60.0%). (2) HCV mono-infected individuals infected HCV mostly through blood or blood products transfusions (80.8%), the HCV subtypes were identified as 1b (67.7%), 6a (17.2%), 3a (6.1%), 2a (5.0%), 3b (2.0%), 4a (1.0%) and 5a (1.0%) respectively, the genetic distance within subtype 1b was also longer than those within other subtypes, the predominant HCV subtype in HCV mono-infected individuals infected through blood or blood products transfusions was 1b (76.2%).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The diversity of HCV subtypes in HIV/HCV co-infected and HCV mono-infected individuals in Guangdong Province was high, both the major transmission route and HCV subtype between HIV/HCV co-infected individuals and HCV mono-infected individuals were different.</p>

Relationship between psychological distress and T lymphocyte in HIV/AIDS patients / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore the relationship between psychological distress and T lymphocyte counts in HIV/AIDS patients.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A total of 102 HIV/AIDS patients were measured by symptom check list (SCL-90), self-rating depressive scale (SDS) and self-rating anxiety scale (SAS). Patients were divided into 2 groups based on CD4+ T lymphocyte counts < 0.2 x 10(9)/L (group A) and > or = 0.2 x 10(9)/L(group B).</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>77 cases (75.49%) had psychological problems, including depression, relationship problems, psychosis, force etc. The prevalence of depression and anxiety were 67.65% (69/102) and 43.13% (44/102) respectively. The symptom of depression and anxiety of patients in group A were severer than those in group B (P < 0.05). The CD4+ T lymphocyte counts were significantly negatively correlated with the total score, depression score, paranoid score and psychosis score of SCL-90 (all P <0.05).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Most of the HIV/AIDS patients were in an obviously abnormal psychological status. The psychological distress symptom of HIV/AIDS patients might had negative effects on the number of CD4+ T lymphocyte.</p>