[Nutritional status of the persons living with HIV/AIDS; its relationship with T CD4+ cells counts]

Malnutrition might be present in people living with HIV/aids (PHIV/aids), and be associated with derangement of the immune system.

To assess the association between the nutricional status of the PHIV/aids and the counts of T CD4+ cells.

Observational, analytical and cross-sectional.

The nutricional status of 217 PHIV/aids in the Pinar del Río province, Cuba (Men: 72.4%; Age at the moment of HIV/aids diagnosis: < 30 years: 62.2%; CD4+ Counts < 350 cells x mm(-3): 32.3%; Anti-retroviral therapy: 33.2%) was indistinctively established by means of the Body Mass Index (BMI), the Global Subjective Assessment (SGA) and the Chang's algorithm. The association between the nutritional status and the CD4+ counts was estimated from the corresponding odds-ratios (OR), indistinctively calculated from the cross-products ratios of a 2 x 2 contingency table; or the coefficients of the logistic regression model.

Malnutrition frequency was dependent from the nutritional assessment method: BMI: 3.7%; Chang's algorithm: 8.8%; SGA: 10.6%; respectively. Nutritional status was weakly associated with CD4+ counts: BMI: ORContingencyTable = 3.69 (p > 0.05); Chang's algorithm: ORContingencyTable = 2.55 (p = 0.047); and SGA: ORContingencyTable = 1.72 (p > 0.05); respectively. When the study serie was adjusted according anti-retroviral therapy (ARVT), association between CD4+ and nutritional status was as follows: BMI: ORLogisticRegression = 0.367 (p = 0.083); Chang's Algorithm: ORLogisticRegression = 2.604 (p = 0.050); and SGA: ORLogisticRegression = 1.714 (p = 0.232); respectively.

Inception of ARVT modifies the association that might exist between the immune system and nutritional status. Reduction of CD4+ counts in a PHIV/aids was weakly associated with derangement of nutritional indicators. It is likely that body weight excess might be modifying this association: 29.0% of the studied PHIV/aids had BMI values >= 25.0 Kg x m(-2).