RESUMO
Early identification of patients co-infected with HIV and human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is essential to improve care, as CD4+ T-cell counts have been revealed to be an unreliable laboratory parameter to monitor HIV infection in co-infection. Unfortunately, HTLV-1 testing is not currently available in sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted this study to determine the performance of absolute CD4+ T-cell count estimation in guiding the clinical suspicion of co-infection. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in antiretroviral-naïve HIV (AN-HIV) patients attending an HIV outpatient clinic in Maputo city, Mozambique. Seven hundred and one AN-HIV patients were enrolled in the study. The prevalence of HTLV-1 co-infection was 4.5% (95% confidence interval [CI] 3.0-6.0%). Logistic regression analysis showed that CD4+ T-cell count was an independent predictor of co-infection (P value: 0.000). The performance of absolute CD4+ T-cell counts in predicting co-infection was higher in symptomatic HIV patients when compared with asymptomatic HIV patients. The best performance was achieved with the cut-off of CD4+ count of 500 cells/mm(3), which gave sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of 54.2%, 87.2%, 24.0% and 96.2%, respectively. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that the absolute CD4+ T-cell count is of moderate accuracy in guiding the clinical suspicion of co-infection in AN-HIV and its implementation could improve the care provided to a significant number of HIV patients in Mozambique.
Assuntos
Contagem de Linfócito CD4 , Infecções por HIV/imunologia , Infecções por HIV/virologia , Infecções por HTLV-I/imunologia , Infecções por HTLV-I/virologia , Vírus Linfotrópico T Tipo 1 Humano/isolamento & purificação , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Antirretrovirais , Linfócitos T CD4-Positivos/imunologia , Linfócitos T CD4-Positivos/patologia , Coinfecção/epidemiologia , Coinfecção/imunologia , Coinfecção/virologia , Estudos Transversais , Feminino , Infecções por HIV/epidemiologia , HIV-1/isolamento & purificação , HIV-2/isolamento & purificação , Infecções por HTLV-I/epidemiologia , Humanos , Modelos Logísticos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Moçambique/epidemiologia , Valor Preditivo dos Testes , Prevalência , Curva ROC , Subpopulações de Linfócitos T/imunologia , Subpopulações de Linfócitos T/patologiaRESUMO
Seven hundred and four HIV-1/2-positive, antiretroviral therapy (ART) naïve patients were screened for HTLV-1 infection. Antibodies to HTLV-1 were found in 32/704 (4.5%) of the patients. Each co-infected individual was matched with two HIV mono-infected patients according to World Health Organization clinical stage, age +/-5 years and gender. Key clinical and laboratory characteristics were compared between the two groups. Mono-infected and co-infected patients displayed similar clinical characteristics. However, co-infected patients had higher absolute CD4+ T-cell counts (P = 0.001), higher percentage CD4+ T-cell counts (P < 0.001) and higher CD4/CD8 ratios (P < 0.001). Although HIV plasma RNA viral loads were inversely correlated with CD4+ T-cell-counts in mono-infected patients (P < 0.0001), a correlation was not found in co-infected individuals (P = 0.11). Patients with untreated HIV and HTLV-1 co-infection show a dissociation between immunological and HIV virological markers. Current recommendations for initiating ART and chemoprophylaxis against opportunistic infections in resource-poor settings rely on more readily available CD4+ T-cell counts without viral load parameters. These guidelines are not appropriate for co-infected individuals in whom high CD4+ T-cell counts persist despite high HIV viral load states. Thus, for co-infected patients, even in resource-poor settings, HIV viral loads are likely to contribute information crucial for the appropriate timing of ART introduction.