Seroprevalence of human immunodeficiency virus in a patient population of North of Portugal

Background

We intended to study the prevalence of HIV infection in our patient population and to compare with the result published before in a smaller population [1].

Materials and methods

We studied 13,023 patients tested for anti-HIV 1/2 between 1/5/2004 and 31/12/2005, belonging to Hospital Santo António (HGSA), to an Infection Disease Hospital (HJU), to an HIV Testing Center (HTC) and other hospitals from North of Portugal (HNP). The test systems for screening was HIV Vitros Eci-software version 3.0 (in 90% of cases) or Axsym^® HIV Ag/Ab Combo Abbott or Architect^® HIV Ag/Ac Combo Abbott (10% of the cases). The reactive samples were confirmed with the supplemental test Inno-Lia™ HIV I/II-Innogenetics.

Results

The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1

We find 705 individuals HIV-1 positive, 9 cases infected with HIV-2 and 19 classified as HIV positive.

Conclusion

We found an overall seroprevalence of HIV infection of 5,6%. Last year our work had shown an HIV seroprevalence of 6,5% in a smaller population.*