Hepatitis B incidence and prevention with antiretroviral therapy among HIV positive individuals in Rakai, Uganda

Abstract

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) may interfere with replication of hepatitis B (HBV) raising the hypothesis that HBV infection might be prevented by ART. We investigated the incidence and risk factors associated with HBV among HIV-infected adults in Rakai, Uganda. Methods—We screened stored sera from 944 HIV-infected adults enrolled in the Rakai Community Cohort Study between September 2003 and March 2015 for evidence of HBV exposure. Serum from participants who tested anti-HBc negative (497) at baseline were tested over 3-7 consecutive survey rounds for incident HBV. Poisson incidence methods were used to estimate incidence of HBV with 95% confidence intervals while Cox proportional regression methods were used to estimate hazard ratios.