Etiology and severity features of acute pancreatitis in HIV-positive patients with different immune status

Acute pancreatitis is common in HIV-infected patients; however, the causes and severity of pancreatitis in HIV-positive patients have a number of significant features that affect both the severity of destruction of the pancreas and the methods of diagnosis and treatment.

Anamnestic data, results of diagnosis and treatment of two groups of patients with acute pancreatitis were analyzed. The first group included 79 patients with acute pancreatitis combined with HIV infection who were admitted to the clinic for the period from 2017 to 2021. In people living with HIV, drugs and infectious agents caused acute pancreatitis in 11.4% and 24.1% of the cases, respectively. As our study showed, in patients with normal immune status, the drug etiology of pancreatitis prevailed in the structure of the causes of AP, in patients with immunodeficiency, infectious causes of pancreatitis were dominant.

According to the results of data analysis, it is clear that HIV infection is a factor that makes the course of pancreatitis about two times worse regardless of the presence of immunosuppression. The etiological structure of HIV-associated acute pancreatitis directly depends on the patient's immune status and differs in many ways from that of HIV-negative patients or patients receiving ART.

The severity of the disease and the risk of death remain high in acute pancreatitis caused by infectious agents against the background of immunosuppression.