The pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus in a cohort of patients co-infected with hepatitis C virus (Immune deficiency)

The purpose of this study was to establish whether patients who are co-infected with HIV and HCV have a more severe disease progression of HIV as compared to patients who are mono-infected with HIV. This study is a retrospective cohort study that used an existing database of 1,276 HIV positive patients, 564 of whom have been tested for HCV. There were 238 HCV negative and 326 HCV positive patients.; Descriptive analyses were performed, and Kaplan-Meier (KM) survival analyses were estimated relating four selected HIV endpoints to HCV status.; The HIV endpoint CD4 count ≤100 was selected for the Cox analyses. HCV entered as the single main effect yielded a hazard ratio of 1.4, which was not statistically significant (p-value = 0.51). The final Cox model chosen to be most predictive of reaching the HIV endpoint of CD4 count ≤100 included the variables HCV status, risk behaviour, effective HIV treatment, and AIDS-defining illness.