HAART and Immune status as predictors of opportunistic enteric coccidian infections in HIV/AIDS patients

Cryptosporidiosis, Isosporiasis and Microsporidiosis are the major intestinal coccidian parasitic infections, reported in HIV-infected patients and are the key parasitic diseases included in the Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC) case definitions for AIDS. The present study seeks to find the association between immune status, treatment status and duration of diarrhoea in HIV infected patients and risk of acquiring enteric coccidian infections. Isospora belli was the commonest parasite (73% of parasites) followed by Cryptosporidium (13%) , Cyclospora (7%) and Blastocystis hominis (7%); one case of mixed infection with Isospora belli and Blastocystis hominis. More parasites were isolated from patients with chronic diarrhoea than those without (p 0.01). Coccidian parasites were more commonly detected in HIV positive patients with CD4+ T cell counts between 50 to 200cells/l (p 0.01). Isolation of enteric parasites was significantly more common in patients before the administration of antiretroviral therapy (p 0.05).