Abstract:

Background: Treponema pallidum infections endemic in many resource limited countries including Tanzania and in HIV seropositive individuals it has been associated with poor outcome such as increase in viral load and decrease in CD4 counts. Despite being endemic in these countries, there is limited information about its prevalence among HIV seropositive individuals.

Methodology: This was a cross sectional hospital based study involving a minimum of 183 HIV seropositive individuals which was conducted at BMC from July to August 2018. Socio-demographic and other relevant information was collected by using pre tested data collection tool. Blood samples was collected from the consenting study participants. Venereal diseases research laboratory (VDRL) screening rapid test and confirmatory by treponemal test (TPHA) as per manufacturer’s instructions. Data were analysed using STATA version 13.

Findings: A total of 450 participants were enrolled with mean ± SD age of 43.9 ± 10.8 years. The overall, seropositivity for VDRL antibodies was 14.0% and seropositivity for TPHA 10.0%. Being peasant (p=0.003) was statistically associated with acute syphilis and having CD4 count (p=0.026) was associated with acute syphilis.

Conclusion and Recommendation: The prevalence of syphilis infection was significantly high among HIV infected patients. HIV infection, peasants were associated with an increase of syphilis infection, therefore the victims are highly encouraged to screen these pathogens so that appropriate treatment can be initiated.