New frontiers in sickle cell disease: The role of antiviral therapies and emerging drugs in managing viral infections

Table 1 Studies reported blood borne viral infections in sickle cell disease patients

Ref.	Type of study	Participants	Results
Namasopo et al[28], 2013	Cross-sectional study	SCD patients aged from 1 to 18 years	Out of 244 SCD patients, 85 patients had no history of transfusion; out of which 1 (1.1%) was HCV positive and 84 (98.9%) were HCV negative 159 had history of transfusion out of which 5 (3.2%) were HCV positive. The patients who had undergone transfusion were likely to be HCV positive but the above difference was not statistically significant
Diarra et al[29], 2013	Prospective study	133 SCD patients	At the time of enrolment, viral infection prevalence in patients was 1% for HIV, 3% for HBV and 1% for HCV. After blood transfusion seroconversion was noticed for one each for HIV, HBV and HCV. They recommended that improvisation should be made in blood transfusion safety norms in Mali for sickle cell anaemia patients
Alkindi et al[30], 2019	Retrospective study (data from electronic patients’ records)	Total 1000 SCD patients with mean age 295 years ± 10.4 years	Out of the 1000 SCD patients, 23 (2.3%) had positive serology for HBV surface antigen, of whom 16 (1.6%) were HBV DNA positive and no SCD patient had HIV positive
Odaibo et al[27], 2021	Case-control study carried out at Ibadan, Nigeria	1017 cases of SCD and 1017 controls	Prevalence rates of HIV was 0.6%, HBV was 6.1% and HCV was 1.6%. The highest prevalence was observed in the 20-29 age group for HCV, 30-39 age group for HBV infection and 40-49 age group for HIV infection
Shayo et al[31], 2021	Cross-sectional multisite hospital-based study	SCD patients ≥ 16 years	Total 185 (56.9%) females and 140 males were tested. Out of the above participants, 6 (1.8%) and 4 (1.2%) were having HIV and HBV infections respectively
Mawuli et al[32], 2022	Cross-sectional hospital-based study	SCD patients ≤ 19 years to ≥ 50 years	Total 51 (36%) males and 90 (64%) females were tested. The 12 patients (9%) had prevalence of HCV antibodies among 141 SCD patients at Greater Accra Region of Ghana

HBV: Hepatitis B virus; HCV: Hepatitis C virus; HIV: Human immunodeficiency virus; SCD: Sickle cell disease.