Study of correlation between clinical profile, CD4 count and total lymphocyte count in HIV infected patients at rural tertiary care institute

Background: India is a country with low HIV prevalence, yet it has the third largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS. Availability of antiretroviral medications is improving, making it is important to develop feasible strategies for the management of antiretroviral therapies in resource-limited settings. Aim and objectives: To study clinical profile of HIV infected patients with special respect to total lymphocyte count (TLC) and CD4 count and study the correlation between Total Lymphocyte count (TLC) and CD4 count in HIV infected patients. Materials and methods: An observational study was conducted on patients admitted in general medicine ward at the tertiary care hospital, fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria, for duration of 24 months. The detailed history and examination findings of the patients were recorded. To analyse the data we used statistical software SPSS 16.0 was used. Results: Fever was the most common symptom reported. CD4 counts corresponded to various opportunistic infections. The Pearson correlation of TLC with CD4 counts was 0.388 i.e. moderate correlation at p<0.05 (0.005) and this showed the statistical high significance between TLC and CD4 count. Conclusion: TLC is a widely available and inexpensive parameter, which can be used in place of CD4 count, for monitoring immune status in HIV infected individuals. TLC values may be useful, but less sophisticated and less costly methods of determining CD4 counts such as microvolume fluorimetry and ELISA techniques be evaluated and made available for use in resource-limited settings.