A study on superficial fungal infections in HIV patients receiving Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART) and its correlation with CD4 count

Background HIV patients suffer from opportunistic infections atleast once during their lifetime and fungal infections comprise the second most common etiology for opportunistic infection in these individuals causing significant morbidity and mortality. Objectives To study the prevalence of various fungi causing superficial infections in HIV patients receiving ART, its correlation with CD4 count and to determine the antifungal susceptibility pattern of the fungal isolates using Central Laboratory Standards Institute(CLSI) broth microdilution method and E test (Hi comb MIC test). Methods The cross sectional comparative study included 100 HIV patients comprising of 70 ART receiving individuals(study group) and 30 ART-naïve individuals (control group).Clinical samples were collected and processed by standard microbiological methods. Data analysis was done using statistics package IBM-SPSS statistics 20.Results Candida (42.85), Malassezia species (8.75) and filamentous fungi (24.28) like Aspergillus, Curvularia and Fusarium were isolated from ART receiving patients. Positive cases showed CD4 counts in the range of 200-300 cellsmm3.