101. HIV co‐infection is associated with increased transmission risk in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus
- Author
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Ragonnet‐Cronin, Manon, Hostager, Reilly, Hedskog, Charlotte, Osinusi, Ana, Svarovskaia, Eugenia, and Wertheim, Joel O
- Subjects
Medical Microbiology ,Biomedical and Clinical Sciences ,Clinical Sciences ,Immunology ,Emerging Infectious Diseases ,Digestive Diseases ,Hepatitis - C ,Hepatitis ,Chronic Liver Disease and Cirrhosis ,Infectious Diseases ,Prevention ,Liver Disease ,HIV/AIDS ,2.2 Factors relating to the physical environment ,Aetiology ,Infection ,Good Health and Well Being ,Adolescent ,Adult ,Aged ,Child ,Cluster Analysis ,Coinfection ,Female ,Genotype ,HIV Infections ,Hepacivirus ,Hepatitis C ,Chronic ,Humans ,Male ,Middle Aged ,RNA ,Viral ,Viral Load ,Young Adult ,co-infection ,evolution ,hepatitis C virus ,human immunodeficiency virus ,transmission cluster ,Microbiology ,Gastroenterology & Hepatology ,Clinical sciences ,Medical microbiology - Abstract
Molecular epidemiological analysis of viral pathogens can identify factors associated with increased transmission risk. We investigated the frequency of genetic clustering in a large data set of NS34A, NS5A, and NS5B viral sequences from patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV). Within a subset of patients with longitudinal samples, Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) analysis was applied which identified a threshold of 0.02 substitutions/site as most appropriate for clustering. From the 7457 patients with chronic HCV infection included in this analysis, we inferred 256 clusters comprising 541 patients (7.3%). We found that HCV/HIV co-infection, young age, and high HCV viral load were all associated with increased clustering frequency, an indicator of increased transmission risk. In light of previous work on HCV/HIV co-infection in acute HCV cohorts, our results suggest that patients with HCV/HIV co-infection may disproportionately be the source of new HCV infections and treatment efforts should be geared towards viral elimination in this vulnerable population.
- Published
- 2019