ECDC: New TB/HIV Co-Infections Have Increased Since 2011

According to the 2017 “Tuberculosis Surveillance and Monitoring in Europe” report, coauthored by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe, incidence of tuberculosis (TB) declined by an average 5.4% per year between 2011 and 2015, but the percentage of HIV cases among TB patients increased from 5.5% to 9.0% during the same time period.

An estimated 323,000 new and relapsed cases of TB occurred in 53 countries in the WHO Europe/Eastern Europe Region and Liechtenstein, of which 27,000 (8.4%) were persons with HIV/TB co-infection.
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Of 206,096 identified cases of TB reported by 39 countries to the ECDC and WHO, 181,995 (88.3%) were screened for HIV and 16,380 tested HIV-positive (9% of the tested population). This indicated a continued increase in HIV/TB co-infection in the region, which has risen by 13.1% on average annually since 2011.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) reporting was low, the researchers noted, with only 22 countries providing information on ART enrollment of HIV-positive TB cases. Of the 9230 cases with ART reporting, 5818 (64%) had received ART in 2015, which is higher than the 59.1% reported in 2014 but far lower than WHO target numbers.

“TB is a major cause of death among people living with HIV, and this deadly combination is increasing in the Region,” the authors wrote. “Since HIV co-infection is associated with low TB treatment success, special attention should be given to these cases, with strict adherence to international guidelines for prevention and treatment of TB in HIV-infected adults.”

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control/WHO Regional Office for Europe. Tuberculosis surveillance and monitoring in Europe 2017. Stockholm, Sweden: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2017. Accessed March 23, 2017. http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/ecdc-tuberculosis-surveillance-monitoring-Europe-2017.pdf.