Prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibodies in tuberculosis patients in Lagos, Nigeria.

TL;DRAbstract

To establish the prevalence of HIV antibodies in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis, 536 new cases presenting with symptoms of bronchopulmonary disorders were randomly selected from the six referral chest clinics in Lagos and screened for tuberculosis and HIV infections. Sputum and serum samples were obtained from all the patients. The sputum samples were examined for acid-fast bacilli (AFB) by both microscopy and culture. The sera were screened for HIV-1 and HIV-2 antibodies by ELISA and confirmed by Western blot (WB). Of the 536 cases studied, 188 (35%) were positive for AFB while 13 (2.4%) were seropositive for HIV. Correlation between the AFB and HIV results revealed that 10 (5.3%) of the 188 AFB positives were also seropositive for HIV as compared to 3 (0.9%) in the 348 AFB negative cases. The difference in the HIV seroprevalence rates in the two groups was statistically significant (P < 0.001). The recorded higher frequency of HIV infections in the AFB positives strongly sugges

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