Epidemiological and Clinical Evaluation of a Group of HIV/AIDS Patients Who Referred to Our Clinic

• Main Authors: Nail ÖZGÜNEŞ, Tuba ZENGİN ELBİR, Saadet YAZICI, Ayşe Canan ÜÇIŞIK, Arzu DOĞRU, Pınar ERGEN, Fatma SARGIN, Özlem AYDIN
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bilimsel Tip Yayinevi 2012-06-01
• Series: Flora Infeksiyon Hastalıkları ve Klinik Mikrobiyoloji Dergisi
• Subjects: HIV; Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; Epidemiology
• Online Access: http://www.floradergisi.org/getFileContent.aspx?op=REDPDF&file_name=2012-17-02-057-061.pdf

Introduction: The epidemiological features, clinical symptoms and laboratory findings of HIV/AIDS cases who refered to our clinic between 1993-2010 were evaluated retrospectively. Materials and Methods: Our study is a descriptive retrospective research. Descriptive characteristics were compared regarding gender. Blood samples obtained from anti-HIV 1-2 positive patients were used to confirm the diagnoses with Western Blot test. HIV-RNA and lymphocyte subgroups were examined in all patients. Graphpad Prism 5.0 was used for statistical analysis. A value of p< 0.05 was accepted as statistically significant. Results: Ninety nine (73.9%) of the cases were male and 35 (26.1%) were female. The mean age was 40.45 ± 12.32 years. The housewife ratio was extremely high (78.7%) among all patients. The heterosexual and homosexual intercourse ratios were 63.5% and 8.9% respectively. The route of transmission was not known in 23.1% of the patients 17.9% of those patients were tested due to diagnosis of their partners and 14.1% were tested due to fever. Mean CD4 count was 312.5 ± 222.7 and mean viral load was 314.900 ± 1.003.000 IU. Pulmonary tuberculosis was diagnosed in 9.7% of the patients. Patients were also evaluated for depressive symptoms and no statistical difference was found between genders (p= 0.07). Mortality rate was 8.9%. Conclusions: Heterosexual intercourse was found as the main transmission route of HIV. Unknown transmission route seems to be a problem. The most common co-infection was pulmonary tuberculosis. No significant difference was determined between males and females in terms of the occurrence of depressive symptoms.