the effect of gbv-c infection on cd4 count and viral loads in patients infected with hiv

background the picture that has emerged from studies investigating hiv infected people with gbv-c viremia is that they have lower plasma hiv viral loads in comparison with hiv-positive people who did not have the gbv-c viremia. objectives since gbv-c hiv coinfection has not been studied in iran, we have designed a survey to study the outcomes of gbv-c infection on hiv infected individuals. patients and methods we analyzed 78 serum samples from hiv-positive patients in tehran. the hiv positive statue was confirmed by western blot in our laboratory. next we detected gbv-c rna by rt nested-pcr and divided our patient into gbv-c positive and gbv-c negative groups. the final step was measuring the cd4 count and hiv viral load and comparing the means of the cd4 count and hiv viral load in hiv-infected individuals in the gbv-c positive and gbv-c negative groups. results we detected gbv-c rna in 15 patients out of 78. the mean cd4 count was 607.13 compared to 415.87 in the gbv-c negative group and the difference was significant (p = 0.005). in contrast to the cd4 count there was no significant difference in hiv viral loads between hiv infected individuals in the gbv-c positive and gbv-c negative groups. conclusion although there was no significant difference in the mean of the hiv viral load between the gbv-c positive and gbv-c negative groups, the significantly higher cd4 mean in the gbv-c positive group compared with the gbv-c negative group suggests a beneficial effect of this coinfection.