Benuel Nyagaka

Background: Co-infection of High Risk Human Papillomavirus (HR-HPV) and HIV is thought to favour initiation of intraepithelial squamous cell lesion and subsequent progression to cervical carcinoma. Objectives: Evaluation of cytological physiognomies in relation to possible age influence and the genotype distribution of human papillomaviruses among HPV/HIV co-infected and HPV monoinfected women in Kisii, Kenya. Methods: The case-control study enrolled 42 HPV/HIV co-infected and 42 HPV monoinfected women. Cervical swabs were collected in ThinPrep vials for HPV tying and cytological analysis. HPV subtypes were assayed by Xpert® HPV system (GXHPV-CE-10). Results: Mono-infected women aged 30-39 years had the highest proportion of low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) at 14 (16.67%) while the co-infected aged 50-59 years had the highest proportion of high grade squamous intraepi- thelial lesion (HSIL) at 9 (10.71%). HPV-16 genotype was the most predominant and it increased with...

Background: A better understanding of the baseline characteristics of elderly people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) is relevant because the world’s HIV population is ageing. Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the baseline characteristics of PLWHA aged ≥ 50years at recruitment to HIV/ AIDS clinic compared against the viral load (VL) and CD4 count among patients attending Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital (KTRH), Kenya. Methods: We retrospectively evaluated temporal inclinations of CD4 levels, viral load change and baseline demographic characteristics in the electronic records at the hospital using a mixed error-component model for 1329 PLWHA attending clinic between January 2008 and December 2019. Results: Findings showed a significant difference in the comparison between baseline VL and WHO AIDS staging (p=0.026). Overall VL levels decreased over the period significantly by WHO AIDS staging (p<0.0001). Significant difference was ob- served by gender (p<0.0001), across a...

HIV and AIDS remain a major health burden worldwide. Majority of HIV and AIDS impact is borne by women. Among these women, expectant mothers who become infected by HIV and AIDS will transmit the infection to their infants. This can occur during pregnancy, labour and delivery, or breastfeeding. In order to deter HIV-1 virus spread to the unborn infants intervention strategies namely Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and vaccines must be used. However, ARVs develop resistance due to evolution of new strains of HIV virus which are drug resistant. This suggests that new intervention strategies have to be developed to deter the spread to unborn infants. One of the options is to characterize the HIV virus in order to know the virus strains circulating among the infected population. The unique characteristics in the virus can the be targeted in development of new ARVs, diagnostic techniques and vaccines. The aim of this study was to determine HIV-1 gag gene subtypes circulating among antenatal cl...