Hepatitis C Prevalence and Validation of a Clinical Prediction Score for Targeted Screening among People Living with HIV in Ghana.

WHO recommends hepatitis C (HCV) screening for all people living with HIV (PLHIV). Yet, HCV coinfection was shown to be rare in some Sub-Saharan HIV cohorts, and targeted testing was suggested more efficient for such settings. We studied HCV prevalence among Ghanaian PLHIV, and assessed the external validity of a score to guide targeted testing. This score was initially derived from a Cambodian HIV cohort, and uses as predictors: age, household member/partner with liver disease, diabetes, generalized pruritus, AST, platelets, and AST-to-platelet ratio index. We enrolled 4,023 PLHIV, most from Greater Accra and Central regions, 28.4% were male, median age was 47 years, and high-risk behavior was reported to be rare. HCV seroprevalence was 0.57%, and HCV-RNA was detectable in 0.5%. Sequencing revealed genotype 1(b) and 2(q/r) infections. The discriminatory performance of the score was suboptimal in the Ghanaian setting. The area under the curve was 0.69 (95% CI 0.59-0.79). HCV coinfection prevalence was very low in this Ghanaian PLHIV cohort with reported low-risk of onward transmission. To avoid the cost of screening all PLHIV in similar cohorts in resource-constrained settings, further research to develop better tools/scores to guide targeted HCV testing is needed.

Management of TB/HIV co-infection: the state of the evidence.

Tuberculosis (TB) and HIV are strongly linked. There is a 19 times increased risk of developing active TB in people living with HIV than in HIV-negative people with Sub-Saharan Africa being the hardest hit region. According to the WHO, 1.3 million people died from TB, and an additional 300,000 TB-related deaths among people living with HIV. Although some progress has been made in reducing TB-related deaths among people living with HIV due to the evolution of diagnostics, treatment and antiretroviral HIV treatment, multi drug resistant TB is becoming a source of worry. Though significant progress has been made at the national level, understanding the state of the evidence and the challenges will better inform the national response of the opportunities for improved patient outcomes. FUNDING: None.

Effect of HIV infection on TB treatment outcomes and time to mortality in two urban hospitals in Ghana-a retrospective cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: Tuberculosis (TB) is currently causing more deaths than Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) globally. Ghana as one of the 30 high burden TB/HIV countries has a high annual TB case-fatality rate of 10%. The study sought to assess the effect of HIV infection on TB treatment outcomes and assess the time to mortality after treatment onset. METHODS: We conducted a review of treatment files of TB patients who were treated from January 2013 to December 2015 in two urban hospitals in the Accra Metropolis. Modified Poisson regression analysis was used to measure the association between HIV infection and TB treatment outcomes. Kaplan-Meier survival estimates were used to plot survival curves. RESULTS: Seventy-seven percent (83/107) of HIV infected individuals had successful treatment, compared to 91.2% (382/419) treatment success among HIV non-infected individuals. The proportion of HIV-positive individuals who died was 21.5% (23/107) whilst that of HIV-negative individuals was 5.5% (23/419). Being HIV-positive increased the risk of adverse outcome relative to successful outcome by a factor of 2.89(95% CI 1.76-4.74). The total number of deaths recorded within the treatment period was 46; of which 29(63%) occurred within the first two months of TB treatment. The highest mortality rate observed was among HIV infected persons (38.6/1000 person months). Of the 107 TB/HIV co-infected patients, 4(3.7%) initiated ART during TB treatment. CONCLUSION: The uptake of ART in co-infected individuals in this study was very low. Measures should be put in place to improve ART coverage among persons with TB/HIV co-infection to help reduce mortality.