Tuberculosis patients. Who should we isolate?
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to W A Ankobiah.
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We retrospectively reviewed the records of 71 patients to determine the epidemiologic and clinical features of pleural tuberculosis in patients with and without AIDS and compared the composition of pleural fluid in these two groups of patients. By age, race, sex, and country of birth, the 21 AIDS and 50 non-AIDS patients with pleural tuberculosis were comparable. However, the AIDS patients were more likely to be intravenous drug abusers than the non-AIDS patients (15/21 vs 6/50, p less than .001). The clinical presentation of each group was similar except that the AIDS patients were more likely to present without respiratory symptoms (4/21 vs 0/50, p less than .001). Pleural fluid and pleural biopsy analyses were not different in the two groups. However, AIDS patients had significantly more chest roentgenographic infiltrates (10/21 vs 11/50, p less than .05), hilar/mediastinal adenopathy (4/21 vs 1/51, p less than .007) and a higher prevalence of bilateral effusions (6/21 vs 5/50, p less than 0.05). AIDS patients were also more likely to have sputum smear/culture positive (10/19 vs 9/49, p less than .001) for mycobacteria. The yield for acid-fast bacilli culture of pleural fluid was higher than previously reported (60%) regardless of AIDS status. Thus, AIDS patients with pleural tuberculosis may present without respiratory symptoms, but otherwise do not differ clinically and epidemiologically from non-AIDS patients. Radiologic and mycobacterial data suggest that pleural tuberculosis in AIDS patients is often part of disseminated mycobacterial infection.
Although the clinical and epidemiologic features of progressive disseminated histoplasmosis (PDH) in the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have been well described, the pathologic and pulmonary aspects remain to be fully defined. A retrospective review of three patients and a prospective study of four more with PDH and AIDS recently admitted to an inner city hospital in a non-endemic area were used to elucidate these features more fully. All patients were men aged 23 to 46 years, born in endemic areas, who had immigrated to the US seven to 15 years before the onset of their illnesses. Five had been exposed to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) through intravenous drug use (one was also a homosexual), and two through heterosexual contacts. Respiratory symptoms were evident in five of the seven patients, fever in seven, weight loss in seven, hepatomegaly in four, splenomegaly in three, peripheral adenopathy in three, and gastrointestinal symptoms in three. PDH was the initial or only opportunistic infection in five patients. Bilateral nodular infiltrates (4/7), bilateral interstitial infiltrates (2/7), and mediastinal adenopathy associated with pleural effusion (1/7) were the chest roentgenographic findings. Histoplasma capsulatum was isolated from five of five bronchoalveolar lavages, four of four transbronchial biopsies, one of one endobronchial biopsy, one of one brushing, one of one pleural biopsy, three of three lymph node biopsies, two of two bone marrow biopsies, one of one liver biopsy, and three of four peripheral blood smears. Granuloma formation was seen in only three of 12 biopsies. There were ten or more fungi per monocyte in almost all tissues, some with extracellular forms.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)