HIV pathogenesis and cytokine secretion patterns in AIDS-related opportunistic infections and HIV-1/HBV co-infections

HIV infection, a disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is rapidly becoming one of the greatest public health challenges faced by medical doctors, public health experts, implementers, biomedical scientists, governments, medical institutions, non-governmental organisations, as well as communities and the vulnerable population in any one society, such as, the women and children. HIV-1 infection is characterised by chronic immune activation which often results in impaired effector functions, such as alterations in cytokine production, which may contribute to the development of opportunistic infections especially during the late stage of the disease. Co-infection with hepatitis b virus (HBV) is very common among hiv-1 infected patients due to their common routes of transmission. However, studies elucidating the interactions between HBV, HIV-1 and the immune system are not very common and as such a lot remains undiscovered. a host of cytokines both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines; have been implicated in the pathogenesis of HIV disease and in HBV/HIV-1 co-infections. However, in most cases it has been quite difficult to allocate distinct roles to specific cytokines, due to the fact that cytokines are pleiotropic in nature and have a huge tendency to interchange roles. Therefore, further studies will be required in order to correlate specific cytokine secretion patterns with specific opportunistic infections, and HIV-1/HBV co-infections. These will in-turn enable scientists to further understand the existing relationships between HIV-1 and the immune system as well as interactions between HIV-1 and HBV.