Authors
J Fabiyi, S Gossa, R Mikponhoue, C Bigot, P Zekeng, K Bourema, A Bigot
Published in
West African journal of medicine. Volume 43. Issue 2. Pages 108-112. Aug 28, 2026.
Abstract
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, few studies have been carried out on the prevalence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome of the coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), particularly in groups of patients with comorbidity factors. Moreover, the question of whether HIV increases the risk of contracting SARS-COV-2 or its severity has been the subject of some research.
To determine the prevalence of SARS-COV-2 and estabilish the relationship between HIV infection and SARS-CoV-2 infection in female sex workers.
Descriptive cross-sectional study of female sex workers attending the Racine clinic in Cotonou, Benin. Statistical data entry and analysis were performed using Excel and Stata 15 software. Proportions, means and frequencies with standard deviation were estimated and compared by chi2 and Fisher tests at the significance level of 5%.
A total of 259 sex workers were recruited for this study, with a mean age of 34.28 ± 9.83 years, ranging from 18 to 70 years. The overall occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 among female sex workers reported in our study was 81.5%. Those of HIV and co-infection HIV SARS-COV 2 were 19.7% and 13.5% respectively. HIV-infected sex workers had a significantly lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection (OR=0.39 with 95% CI [0.19-0.80] and p=0.010), while TCD4+ lymphocyte count ≥ 500 was not significantly associated with a risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection (OR=0.40 with 95% CI [0.11-1.36] and p=0.142).
This study shows that the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among sex workers is high. Sex workers who are infected with HIV are significantly less likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2.
PMID:
42898072
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 20 Oct 2026.
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