Abstract
The estimated incidence of HIV/AIDS has remained stable in recent years and patients with HIV/AIDS continue to increase in Japan. We investigated the trend of the patients with HIV infection in the people who receive the medical checkup as a Health Evaluation and Promotion, and we considered ideal way of action on the patients for achieving their early diagnosis. The subjects were 12 patients with HIV infection who were identified in our healthcare center from April 2005 to December 2014. We evaluated their background and abnormal findings in a complete health checkup. In addition, we evaluated the examinees with a high level of Zinc turbidity test (ZTT) among 35,189 examinees who received medical checkup from April 2013 to March 2014.
All 12 cases were men (six in their 30’s, five in their 40’s, and one in his 20’s). At the time of medical checkup, seven cases were already under treatment, two had stopped visiting their hospitals, but in three people, HIV infection had not been diagnosed. One had acute HIV infection, and two had progressed to AIDS. Seven of the nine cases with HIV infection did not notify about HIV infection during interviews before the examinations. They informed us their status of HIV infection after serious recommendation for HIV screening test by a health checkup doctor. Ten of them (83.3%) showed high levels of ZTT. We identified 22 cases of the men aged under 50 who had a high level of ZTT (>20.0 Kunkel units) during our study period, at least 5 of them (22.7%) had been infected.
When a male examinee aged under 50 shows a high level of ZTT, the health checkup doctor should first suspect HIV and recommend the HIV screening test to the examinee. In conclusion, we should understand the behavior of the HIV examinees and attempt to diagnose HIV/AIDS at an early stage.
