Abstract

Recent studies suggest that the prevalence of hypothyroidism among
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) people who were on treatment
with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) was higher than that in
treatment naïve HIV infected people and those who were not infected
with HIV. This study looked at the prevalence of hypothyroidism in HIV
infected people who are on HAART and the presence or not of other
thyroid abnormalities in these patients.
A total of 128 participants were randomly recruited for the study, made
up of the test population (n = 76), who were HIV positive on HAART,
the control-HIV population (n = 24) who were treatment-naïve and the
control-normal population (n = 28). Blood samples were collected for
thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), free thyroxine (FT4) and free
triiodothyronine (FT3) using a chemiluminescence based third generation
thyroid assay.
A total prevalence of thyroid abnormalities of 26.3%, 33.3% and 7.2%
were observed in the test subjects, control-HIV and control-normal
groups respectively. Low FT3 and FT4 with normal TSH values was
observed in 6.6% (n = 5) and 8.3% ( n = 2) of the test subjects population
and the control-HIV population, while 7.9% (n = 6) and 12.5% (n = 3) of
the test subjects and control-HIV populations had isolated low FT3 and
FT4 values respectively. 1.3% (n =1) of the test population had
subclinical hyperthyroidism. These are compared with the control
-normal population only one person each had subclinical hyperthyroidism
and isolated low FT4. This study thus concludes that, there is apparently
a high prevalence of both thyroid dysfunctions and nonthyroidal illness
(NTI) among HIV infected people, whether treatment naïve or on
HAART.