Detection of Early HIV-1 Infection among Febrile Persons and Blood Donors in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

About 37.9 million persons are infected with HIV globally resulting in 770,000 deaths. Over 50% of this infection and deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa with countries like Nigeria greatly affected. The country also has one of the highest rates of new infections globally. Diverse HIV-1 subtypes have been identified in the country. Febrile persons and blood donors pose a great transmission risk in the country especially during the early stages of infection. HIV-1 rapid kits are routinely used for diagnosis among the general population and high-risk groups. However, there is limited information on the usefulness of HIV rapid kits for early detection especially in areas where diverse HIV-1 subtypes circulate. In this study, the prevalence of early HIV-1 infection as well as circulating HIV-1 subtypes among febrile persons and blood donors were determined. Furthermore, the sensitivity of a widely used HIV-1 rapid antibody kit was compared with those of Antigen/Antibody ELISA based methods. Participants were recruited from selected hospitals in Ibadan and Saki, Nigeria. The prevalence of early HIV infection among 1028 febrile persons (Ibadan: 2.22%; Saki: 1.36%) and blood donors (5.07%) studied were significantly different (P<0.03674). CRF02_AG was the predominant subtype detected with more diverse HIV-1 subtypes observed among febrile persons compared to blood donors. About 1.2% of the samples detected on Antibody-based ELISA methods were undetectable on the HIV-1 rapid antibody kit. Genetic diversity of HIV-1 strains among infected individuals in Oyo State, Nigeria is still relatively high. This diversity is likely impacting on the diagnosis.

Genetic Diversity of HIV-1 and Transfusion Safety : Systematic Review and Concepts Analysis

“…Analysis of this concept would further situate the impact of molecular strains of HIV-1 on residual risk. Some studies have shown that viral load and serology (Antibodies and P2 antigens) were essential in interpreting data evaluating the effectiveness of the donation security system put in place to reduce the risk of HIV transmission in transfusion [1,[49][50][51][52]. The number of times each concept appears shows its importance in the various full articles included in the study.…”

“…Nevertheless, the most recent data from the World Health Organization (WHO) still show that there are annually nearly 2 million new people infected with HIV and with 36.9 million people living with this chronic infection. in 2020 [1,2].…”

“…The molecular epidemiology of HIV around the world reveals that all strains are found in Sub-Saharan Africa in general and Central Africa in particular with an overwhelming majority of non-B strains. These molecular strains could negatively impact the safety of blood donation in these endemic countries [1,3,4]. The geographic distribution of HIV strains differs from continent to continent, region to region.…”

Seroprevalence and Risk Factors Associated with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection Type 1 in Donors of the National Blood Transfusion Center of Libreville (Gabon)

“…These resource-limited countries are faced with this problem because they are still unable to obtain techniques based on nucleic acid research, but also because of low coverage of 4th generation screening tests (Ab/Ag, p24) in blood banks [5]. Without forgetting also the lack of information on rapid screening tests used by almost all blood banks in these countries of Sub-Saharan Africa for the screening of TTIs thus promoting a high risk of transmission of TTIs [6][7].…”