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Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) types Western blot (WB) band profiles as potential surrogate markers of HIV disease progression and predictors of vertical transmission in a cohort of infected but antiretroviral therapy naïve pregnant women in Harare, Zimbabwe by Kerina Duri; Fredrik Müller; Felicity Z Gumbo; Nyaradzai E Kurewa; Simba Rusakaniko; Mike Z Chirenje; Munyaradzi P Mapingure; Babill Stray-Pedersen is a Medicine article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) types Western blot (WB) band profiles as potential surrogate markers of HIV disease progression and predictors of vertical transmission in a cohort of infected but antiretroviral therapy naïve pregnant women in Harare, Zimbabwe about?

## Background Expensive CD4 count and viral load tests have failed the intended objective of enabling access to HIV therapy in poor resource settings. It is imperative to develop simple, affordable and non-subjective disease monitoring tools to complement clinical staging efforts of inexperienced health personnel currently manning most healthcare centres because of brain drain. Besides accurately predicting HIV infection, sequential appearance of specific bands of WB test offers a window of opportunity to develop a less subjective tool for monitoring disease progression. ## Methods HIV type characterization was done in a cohort of infected pregnant women at 36 gestational weeks using WB test. Student-t test was used to determine maternal differences in mean full blood counts and viral load of mothers with and those without HIV __gag__ antigen bands. Pearson Chi-square test was used to assess differences in lack of bands appearance with vertical transmission and lymphadenopathy. ## Results Among the 64 HIV infected pregnant women, 98.4% had pure HIV-1 infection and one woman (1.7%) had dual HIV-1/HIV-2 infections. Absence of HIV pol antigen bands was associated with acute infection,

Who reads Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) types Western blot (WB) band profiles as potential surrogate markers of HIV disease progression and predictors of vertical transmission in a cohort of infected but antiretroviral therapy naïve pregnant women in Harare, Zimbabwe?

Author

Kerina Duri; Fredrik Müller; Felicity Z Gumbo; Nyaradzai E Kurewa; Simba Rusakaniko; Mike Z Chirenje; Munyaradzi P Mapingure; Babill Stray-Pedersen

Publisher

BioMed Central; Springer (Biomed Central Ltd.); London: BioMed Central, 2001-; Springer Science and Business Media LLC; Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Inc. (ISSN 1471-2334)

Published

2011

Language

EN

Field

Medicine (Health Sciences)