Surveillance of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in a hospital based population from Catalonia (Spain)

BACKGROUND: AIDS is one of the most important problems of public health in our setting. The surveillance of HIV infection in sentinel population is an important alternative to the use of the AIDS cases registries, to obtain a dinamic and updated information about HIV/AIDS epidemic. The objetive of t his study was to determine the prevalence of HIV infection among the patien ts from 5 sentinel hospitals in Catalonia, Spain. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Unlinked anonymous screening of serum from patients a ged 15-49 from 5 sentinel hospitals in Catalonia, Spain. Samples were broke n by age, sex, in-patients or out-patients and clinical especialities relat ed to HIV/AIDS or not related. Samples were analyzed in pools of five and w ere tested by the OMS strategy II, for the epidemiological surveillance pou rposes. RESULTS: HIV testing was developed in 9,524 patients, with a prevalence of 1.6% (153 samples). The overall prevalence in men was twice that of women ( 2.3% vs. 1.1%). Ages between 25 to 34 had the higher prevalence (3.1%). Cli nical especialities related with HIV/aIDS had a prevalence twice that of no n related (2.3% vs. 1.2%). CONCLUSIONS: The HIV prevalence found in this population is the highest com pared to similar studies performed in other western european countries. Our data confirm the pattern of HIV infection for age and sex observed in othe r studies in Catalonia, Spain. This is the first study of sentinel surveill ance in sentinel hospitals in Spain and give us the base line which will se rve as a reference to assess the evolution of HIV infection in further stud ies in sentinel hospital populations in Catalonia.