Europäisches Journal für Experimentalbiologie Offener Zugang

Abstrakt

CD₄ ⁺ T cell count in patients concomitantly infected with HIV and Hepatitis B virus in Sokoto state, Nigeria

Alo M. N., Alhassan H. M., Saidu A. Y., Ugah U. I. and Umar F. A.

Concomitant infection of HIV and HBV is a single most important factor that predispose to poor clinical outcome among patients infected with HIV. This study was aimed at evaluating the CD₄ + T cell profile as a marker of immune response and stability in patients infected with HIV and HBV. Five hundred and seventy two HIV infected persons were screened for concomitant infection with HBV using HBV screening kit (Sketec, USA). The CD₄ ⁺ T cell count were also determined using cyflow cytometer (Patec, Germany) out of these number, 88 persons were positive for HBV representing 15.4%. The mean CD₄ ⁺ T cell count was 112.3cell/μL, which was significantly lower than the mean CD4 + T cell count of 312.3cells/μL among those infected with only HIV. This indicates that HBV infection could be associated with rapid decline in CD₄ ⁺ T cell count in HIV infected persons.