5th International AIDS Conference Montreal, Quebec, Canada — Jun 4-9, 1989

Int Conf AIDS 1989 Jun 4-9; 5:163 (abstract no. A.515)
Fox E, Constantine N, Abbatte EA; U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3, Cairo, Egypt

OBJECTIVE: To investigate if the B-cell lymphotropic virus HHV6 shares the sexual transmission route of HIV in East Africa.

METHODS: 200 sera belonging to 4 groups of individuals from the East African city of Djibouti were tested for antibodies against HHV6. Study groups comprised sexually promiscuous individuals at high risk for HIV, but HIV-western blot negative: 50 female prostitutes in Group 1 and 50 males with a sexually transmitted disease in Group 3; Group 2 comprised 50 female controls and Group 4, 50 male controls. All sera were screened at a 1:20 dilution using IFA (Pan Data Systems) incorporating HHV6 infected and uninfected cells as substrate. Sera with positive reactions were titrated further.

RESULTS: Despite the slightly higher percentage of positive sera (%PS) at the screening dilution in the two study groups, these differences were not statistically significant. Moreover, median titers and geometric mean titers of positive sera were very similar in all 4 groups. TABULAR DATA, SEE ABSTRACT VOLUME.

CONCLUSION: Sero-epidemiological data indicate that HHV6 infection was not more prevalent among sexually promiscuous subjects. Thus, HHV6 does not seem to share the sexual transmission route of HIV in East Africa.

890604
A515

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