Photo Credit: Ivan-balvan
The following is a summary of “Incidence of HIV-2 infection in Spain is declining – a registry data analysis,” published in the September 2024 issue of Infectious Diseases by Mendoza et al.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to assess HIV-2 infection, which progresses to AIDS more slowly than HIV-1, and to emphasize the guidelines recommending its exclusion in all newly diagnosed individuals with HIV-seropositive.
They established a national HIV-2 registry in Spain in 1989 after identifying 3 HIV-2 positive cases in Barcelona and documented the primary demographics and clinical features with viral characteristics until December 2023.
The results showed a total of 424 HIV-2 cases in the Spanish registry, peaking in 2009 at 31 cases and declining to less than 10 cases/year after the COVID-19 pandemic. The mean age at diagnosis was 44, with 62.5% being male. Most cases (76%) were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by native Spaniards (14.2%). Heterosexual exposure (67.7%) was the primary transmission route, with fewer cases attributed to transfusions (4), vertical infection (2), injection drug use (7), and men who had sex with men (3.5%). Coinfection with HIV-1 was observed in 9.2% of cases. Molecular characterization identified 121 subtype A and 18 subtype B infections among 139 individuals.
Investigators concluded that the annual incidence of HIV-2 infection in Spain has significantly decreased over the past 15 years, with the current number of cases below 10 per year.
Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971224001474
