HIV And Human Parvovirus B19 Co-Infection: Seroprevalence Of Serum IgM And IgM Specific Antibody And Association With C D4+ T Lymphocytes Subsets

Background: Parvovirus B19 (PV-B19) is a global and common infection in the general population, it is more frequently associated with immunosuppression including HIV infection. It causes anaemia in HIV infections, fifth disease, arthritis and arthralgia. Thus, we hypothesize the seroprevalence of PV-B19 is higher in HIV-positive individuals than those that are HIV-negative. The objective of this study was to determine and compare the prevalence of PV-B19 specific antibodies with the level of immunosuppression between the HIV positive and negative individuals in our locality.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional comparative study of consecutively enrolled, 92 HIV infected, treatment naive adults and 92 HIV-uninfected controls. Their sera were analysed for PV-B19 antibodies using recombinant PV-B19 specific IgM and IgG ELISA kit, while CD4+T-cells was evaluated using Partec flow cytometer. The seroprevalence and CD4+ T cell counts of the HIV positive was compare with the HIV negative using Chi square test and Odds ratio. All statistical analysis was performed with SPSS software version 20 and a p-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.

Results: The prevalence of PV-B19 IgM and IgG antibodies in HIV positive group were 28.8% (26 of 92) and 52.2% (48 of 92), respectively and those in the control group were 15.2% (14 of 92) and 32.6% (30 of 92) respectively, both were statistically significant p < 0.05. The CD4+ T-cell count of the controls was significantly (P < 0.001) higher than that of the HIV positive group, however, this was not significantly (p=0.726) associated with PV-B19 IgM and IgG antibodies.

Conclusion: Human PV-B19 infection is common among treatment naïve HIV-infected adults however this may not be completely attributed to immunosuppression. Further studies are required to elucidate the mechanisms and significance of HAART, HIV viral load and PV- B19 DNA persistence, independently of the CD4+ cell status.