[Immigration and HIV-1 infection: clinical manifestations, subtypes and evolution of 78 patients attended during the last 5 years].

Background And Objective: To analyse the characteristics and HIV-1 subtype in a group of HIV+ hospitalised immigrants in our Infectious Diseases Unit.

Patients And Method: Clinical reports of 78 immigrants HIV+ were reviewed. HIV-1 subtyping was carried out examining the protease and transcriptase genes by phylogenetic analysis. Statistical study was done by SPSS 11.0 program.

Results: 57% of patients come from sub-Saharian Africa. Mainly they had been infected by heterosexual contact. HIV was diagnosed at the hospitalisation time in 35 cases. Only 28% were receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy and 48,7% had CD4+ cells less than 200/microl. The more frequent diagnosed diseases were: tuberculosis (20.5%), candidiasis (24.4%), bacterial pneumonia (19.2%) and malaria (21.8%). HIV-1 subtype B was isolated in 26 patients, none Africans. Twenty nine individuals (52.8%) were infected with HIV-1 non-B subtypes. Relationship between HIV-1 subtype, immunodepression, diagnosed diseases and origin countries was not found apart from malaria.

Conclusions: Most HIV-1 infected immigrants are from Africa, being predominantly infected with HIV-1 non-B subtypes. No relationship between HIV subtype and diagnosed diseases was found.