Occult HBV infection in HIV‐infected adults and evaluation of pooled NAT for HBV

Abstract

The study aimed to determine the prevalence of occult Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection among HIV infected persons, and to evaluate the use of a pooling strategy to detect occult HBV infection in the setting of HIV infection. Five hundred and two HIV positive individuals were tested for HBV, occult HBV, and Hepatitis C and D with serologic and nucleic acid testing (NAT). We also evaluated a pooled NAT strategy for screening occult HBV infection among the HIV-positive individuals. The prevalence of HBV infection among HIV positive individuals was 32 (6.4%) and occult HBV prevalence was 10%. The pooling HBV NAT had a sensitivity of 66.7% and specificity of 100%, compared to HBV DNA NAT of individual samples. In conclusion, this study found a high prevalence of occult HBV infection among our HIV infected population. We also demonstrated that pooled HBV NAT is highly specific, moderately sensitive and cost-effective. Since conventional HBV viral load assays are expensive in resource-limited settings such as India, pooled HBV DNA NAT might be a good way for detecting occult HBV infection and will reduce HBV associated complications.