Association of HCV and Treponema pallidum infection in HIV infected northeastern Thai male blood donors.

The study was performed to determine the association of seroprevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and Treponema pallidum (T. pallidum) infection among HIV infected first time male blood donors (HIV group) in comparison with the HIV seronegative blood donors (control group) in the Northeast of Thailand (NET). Serum samples were collected from 10,321 first blood donation voluntary male donors. All samples were screened for anti-HIV and anti-HCV by particle agglutination test, and syphilis antibody by RPR. The anti-HIV positive sera were repeated by EIA and confirmed by western blot. The reactive anti-HCV samples were confirmed by EIA whereas reactive syphilis antibody samples were confirmed by TPPA. Fisher's exact test was used for statistical analysis. The prevalence of anti-HIV in first time male donors was 0.70 per cent (72/10,321). The age of HIV group and 10,018 male control group ranged from 17-50 years old. The prevalence of HIV among 21-40 years old age group was significantly higher than the 17-20 years old (p = 0.00003). The 17-20 years old HIV group showed significantly higher sero-prevalence of TPPA (p = 0.003). The 21-30 years old HIV group gave significantly higher sero-prevalence of anti-HCV (p = 0.0008) and TPPA (p = 0.045), but the seroprevalence of anti-HCV and TPPA among the 31-50 year old group were nonsignificantly different (p > 0.05). The concurrence of anti-HCV and TPPA in HIV groups was not found. This result indicated that HIV infection among NET voluntary male blood donors was significantly associated with T. pallidum infection in young adults and the HCV infection in mature adults.