Melhem NM, Rahhal N, Charide R, Kreidieh K, El-Khatib R. Human immunodeficiency virus and viral hepatitis among high-risk groups: Understanding the knowledge gap in the Middle East and North Africa Region. World J Hepatol 2015; 7(25): 2619-2630 [PMID: 26557955 DOI: 10.4254/wjh.v7.i25.2619]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Nada M Melhem, PhD, Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases, Medical Laboratory Sciences Program, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, 325 Van Dyck Hall, 11-0236 Riad El Solh, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon. melhemn@aub.edu.lb
Research Domain of This Article
Virology
Article-Type of This Article
Systematic Reviews
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Nada M Melhem, Khalil Kreidieh, Rolla El-Khatib, Medical Laboratory Sciences Program, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon
Nour Rahhal, Department of Health Management and Policy, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon
Rana Charide, Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon
Author contributions: Melhem NM designed and wrote the paper; Rahhal N, Charide R and Kreidieh K reviewed the literature, prepared the tables and contributed to the write-up; El-Khatib R critically read the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: This is not applicable to this review. The authors did not generate the data but rather relied on published ones.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Nada M Melhem, PhD, Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases, Medical Laboratory Sciences Program, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, 325 Van Dyck Hall, 11-0236 Riad El Solh, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon. melhemn@aub.edu.lb
Telephone: +961-1-350000-4699 Fax: +961-1-744470
Received: June 24, 2015 Peer-review started: June 25, 2015 First decision: August 26, 2015 Revised: September 26, 2015 Accepted: October 23, 2015 Article in press: October 27, 2015 Published online: November 8, 2015 Processing time: 137 Days and 21.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Despite the availability of preventive and control measures, co-infection of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive individuals with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and/or hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global health problem of significant and increasing magnitude. While the potential of worse HIV outcomes are suggested to be associated with viral hepatitis, it is still yet to identify the populations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with dual infections (HIV-HBV or HIV-HCV) or triple co-infections with HIV, HBV and HCV. This review highlights the available data on HIV, HBV and HCV and their co-infections in the MENA countries with specific focus on high-risk groups (men who have sex with men, female sex workers, injecting drug users and prisoners).
