Hepatitis delta virus: co-infection and superinfection in Tajikistan
Project Status: 8 Project completed
Commencement Date: 01.03.2016
Duration in months: 30 months
Objective
It is estimated that 6 to 10% of HIV-infected patients in Western countries have HBV co -infection ( Thio C. L., et al. 2002). Co-infection with HBV has been shown to increase the risk of acute hepatitis, hepatic decompensation, liver-related mortality, and virological failure in HIV-infected patients receiving antiretroviral therapy ( Sheng W. H., et al. 2007). For patients with HIV infection, clinical studies of the impact of HDV infection on patients with HBV and HIV coinfection were limited and yielded inconsistent results before the introduction of antiretroviral therapy (Chang S-Y, Yang C-L, Ko W-S, et al. 2011). Some investigators suggested that HIV coinfection might worsen chronic liver damage by HDV and that patients with chronic HDV infection were more likely to develop cirrhosis than patients with HBV monoinfection (Noureddin M, Gish R.,2014), while others showed that the course of chronic HDV infection was not influenced by concomitant HIV infection (Calle Serrano B et all.,2012; Onali S et all.,2014). With the preexisting high HBV seroprevalence in Tajikistan, it is postulated that a high HDV seroprevalence would be observed with the HIV-infected IDU and HDV infection may will occurred among IDU with chronic HBV infection who became HIV infected in this outbreak. In this study, molecular epidemiology of HDV infection among persons at risk for HIV transmission in Tajikistan will be investigated.
The results of work will determine particularities of etiological structure, clinical course, its character and immunological changes of delta infection will allow improvement in early diagnostics of viral hepatitis D, timely state the adequate treatment tactics and further dispenser observation. The work will evaluate the role of different risk factors and genotypes diversity of delta infection among different population groups.
The project aims to evaluate the role of various risk factors for HDV infection in different population groups and also determine association of any virological factors. The results of the work will delineate epidemiological, clinical, virological and immunological characteristics of HDV infection among patients with HIV infection and PWID. These data will help in early and reliable diagnostics of hepatitis D, formulation of prevention and control measures and timely referral of infected patients to care and treatment.
