Human herpes virus-8 infections among subjects with human immunodeficiency virus infection and normal healthy individuals in India.

Human herpes virus-8 (HHV-8) is etiologically associated with Kaposi's sarcoma. There is insufficient information on the epidemiology of HHV-8 infection from India. Blood samples from 87 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals and 84 normal healthy blood donors were tested for the HHV-8 IgG antibodies. Further, a total of 309 whole blood samples from treatment-naïve HIV-1-infected individuals and from 70 normal healthy individuals were also collected and tested for HHV-8 DNA. The seroprevalence of HHV-8 was 4.7% in the South Indian population. There was no significant difference in the seroprevalence of HHV-8 in the HIV-infected and uninfected patients. None of the 379 samples tested were positive for HHV-8 DNA. Our study revealed a very low exposure of the South Indian patient population to HHV-8 and multicentric epidemiological studies are needed to understand the prevalence of HHV-8 in different regions of India and to confirm any gender-specific differences in seroprevalence.