Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 14: Global incidence of liver disease is attributed mainly to Hepatitis B Virus infection which involves around 400 million people and its morbidity and mortality being mainly due to Cirrhosis and Hepatocellular carcinoma. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has one in three chances of penetrating from an abrasion on the skin as compared to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which has only one in eleven chances.
This was stated by Dr. Vinay Rampal during his lecture on ‘Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) Co-infection’ in the recently held 74th Annual Conference of the Association of Physicians of India (APICON-2019) at Kochi, Kerala.
Dr. Rampal was called to delivered his lecture on this dreaded co-infection which involved around 10% of all the HIV infected persons the world over.
“Although HIV and HBV have similar routes of transmission and we use similar anti-viral agents for them still neither has any cure at present and a half hearted approach in their management can result in development of resistant strains with devastating results”. Dr Rampal said adding that unlike normal persons in whom vaccination against Hepatitis B results in 90 to 95% antibody formation, in HIV positive patients the anti body formation occurs hardly in 18 to 71%.
In pregnant HIV afflicted women, he said the incidence of HBV is thrice that of normal females and even if managed carefully during pregnancy against this co-infection with perinatal anti- HIV drugs and immunisation of their offspring with hepatitis B immunoglobulin and hepatitis B vaccine, still may transmit this co-infection to 5-15% of their offspring.
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