Protective effect of GBV-C in positive HIV patients

Abstract

The human immunodeficiency virus is able to generate chronic severe immunodeficiency, which can lead to less quality of life due to a more fragile health, resulting in deficiency of the organism in dealing with secondary infections. It is well know that the presence of co-infection with hepatitis G virus (GVB-C) is common among HIV positive individuals, who present the same risk behavior for sexual transmissible diseases. Moreover, until today the interactions between the two viruses with the immune system from the infected individual is not fully described. Because of that, the characterization of the behavior of immune cells during the chronic inflammatory process induced by HIV in the presence of hepatitis G virus can generate important information for the development of better approaches for clinical treatment of patients that are not able to fully control the HIV viremia, since some studies indicate that the co-infection with GVB-C is able to reduce the morbidity and mortality of HIV positive patients. Because of that, this study aims to evaluate the behavior of the immune system of individuals co-infected with GVB-C and HIV in comparison with individuals only infected with HIV, with focus on Toll like receptors, trying to assess and confirm if the co infection is able to change the course of infection by HIV, resulting in overall better quality of immune response and HIV infection scenario. (AU)