Prevalence of Pulmonary Tuberculosis in HIV/AIDS Subjects

Pulmonary Tuberculosis (PTB) is a one of the most serious opportunistic infection in HIV/AIDS subjects and is major cause of mortality and morbidity across the globe especially in developing countries. To find out the prevalence of PTB -HIV/AIDS co-infection in Punjab province of Pakistan, we conducted this cross sectional study at Pathology department of Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore. A well-structured questionnaire was designed to determine the socio-demographic and clinical features of the study participants. 150 HIV/AIDS subjects were recruited in this study. For the diagnosis of PTB in HIV infected subjects, we considered clinical history of all the patients and performed sputum examination by microscopy. For further confirmation of PTB, we also performed sputum culture on L-J medium and chest X-ray. CD4+ T lymphocytes count was also determined to assess immunological status of all studied subjects. Out of total 150 subjects, 23 (15.3%) individuals have PTB. The results of the current study disclosed that prevalence of PTB among HIV/AIDS subjects was high. CD4+ T lymphocytes count of co-infected subjects was lower (39.13%) as compared to mono-infected HIV subjects (25.98%) which specifies low immunity in co-infected subjects. HIV/TB co-infection was more prevalent among male (2.66%) than female (12.67%) subjects (p=0.94).