In 2018, Indonesia was the second-highest-ranking country in Asia Pacific related to the death of HIV patients. Based on data from the Ministry of Health, Surabaya is a city with the most HIV patients in East Java after DKI Jakarta province. The number of deaths with HIV infection is often associated with the reactivation of latent viruses, including the herpes virus.
The virus will return active if the immune system is weakened, and will cause inflammation of the lungs to the brain. People with HIV/AIDS (ODHA) infections have weakened immune systems due to HIV. Besides, this herpes virus also stimulates HIV to replicate.
In Indonesia, there are no epidemiology data related to HHV-6, but it is potentially high for reactivation and will be fatal. Viruses that are common to infect children under the age of 2 have the same receptor-T CD4 + cells.
Based on the results of the study showed that HHV-6 infected 17.6% of people with HIV, which is fifteen of eighty-five people. The figure is higher compared to the case of healthy people who are only three people from eighty-five or 3.5% of the samples examined.
In this study, HHV-6 has two subtypes, namely, subtype A and subtype B. Subtype B is more dominant than subtype A which is 80%, and only 13.3% subtype A.
If HIV patients are also infected with HHV-6, then the progress towards the way of AIDS will be faster because of the second nature of this virus that improves replication. Thus, the HHV-6 virus should be pressed to amount to undetectable numbers.
Viral load HIV is also examined to determine the presence of correlation with HHV-6 infections and is known to have no relation between the amount of viral load of HIV with HHV-6 infection. This suggests that although the viral amount of HIV loads is low, it does not close the likelihood of HHV-6 infection.
HHV-6 test is not a general screening test done in Indonesia. The results of this research can be used as a consideration material by competent officials and medical personnel, especially doctors to do tests of HHV-6 infections.
The results are expected to provide insight to the stakeholders and the community, especially HIV-related viruses.
Author: Devi Oktafiani
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