Study on clinico-epidemiological profile of HIV patients in eastern India

In this study, 438 HIV positive patients attending the HIV clinic of Sir Sundar Lal Hospital, IMS, BHU were enrolled. Of these 354 were males (mean CD4 count 179 +/- 9.3 cells/microl) and 84 were females (mean CD4 count 323 +/- 28.26 cells/microl). The mean age of the study subjects at the time of diagnosis was 32.6 years. Heterosexual contact was the commonest mode of transmission in 352 (80.4%) patients followed by blood transfusion in 2.5%. History suggestive of a risk factor for HIV transmission could not be elicited in 62 (14.1%) patients. Among male patients, 71.5% were migrant workers. Fever (70.6%), weight loss (53.3%), chronic diarrhea (43.9%) and cough (40.3%) were the common presenting symptoms. Out of the 438 patients, 66.4% had opportunistic infections at the time of reporting to the hospital. The most common opportunistic infection was tuberculosis (38.8%) followed by oropharyngeal candidiasis (20.3%) and diarrhea (12.7%). CD4 counts of the patients were significantly inversely correlated with the number of symptoms and the number of opportunistic infections (correlation coefficient were -.289 and -.236 respectively).