HIV Weekly - 12th March, 2008

Anti-HIV treatment

Side-effects

Illness

Hepatitis C virus

Many people with HIV are also infected with hepatitis C virus, and liver disease caused by hepatitis C is now a major cause of illness and death in people with HIV.

There have been several outbreaks of hepatitis C in HIV-positive gay men in recent years. In these outbreaks hepatitis C was sexually transmitted.

Researchers in London have now found that a high proportion of gay men who became infected with hepatitis C  did so soon after they were first infected with HIV. And researchers in Paris have found evidence that gay men with HIV and hepatitis C are being reinfected, or superinfected with other strains of hepatitis C.

Unprotected sex, fisting and infection with another sexually transmitted infection, such as syphilis or gonorrhoea, were risk factors for hepatitis C infection or reinfection.