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Background. Nigeria has the world largest burden of paediatric HIV and is also highly endemic for Hepatitis B virus (HBV). However, relatively little is known regarding the prevalence of HBV-HIV coinfections among Nigerian children. Methods. A retrospective study among treatment naive HIV-infected children attending the pediatric clinic of the APIN Plus/Harvard PEPFAR program of the Federal Medical Centre, Makurdi, between June 2008 and June 2012. Results. The mean age of the 395 subjects studied was 7.53 ± 4.23 years. Thirty-one subjects (7.8%) were positive for HBV. No subject was HIV-HBV-HCV triply infected. Significantly higher HIV-HBC coinfections were found, in older subjects (11-15 years), subjects that did not receive nor complete Hepatitis B vaccinations, and subjects that had a severe immunosuppression of < 15% with respective P values of 0.00, 0.01, and 0.00. HIV-HBV co-infection did not significantly impact on other baseline characteristics including, gender, WHO clinical stage, median absolute CD4 count, mean viral load, median ALT, and hepatotoxicity. Conclusion. A high seroprevalence of HBV among this cohort of HIV-infected children contributes to the calls for pre-ART screening for HBV and the necessary paradigm shift in the ART nucleoside backbone to include agent(s) more dually effective against HIV and HBV.
Anígilájé et al. (Wed,) studied this question.