Abstract

Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the commonest opportunistic infections and the leading cause of death in HIV patients in developing countries. Diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) in people living with HIV/AIDS is challenging as sputum microscopy is negative in more patients due to lack of caseous necrosis. This study was done to find out the co-prevalence of TB among HIV infection patients, to determine the prevalence of MDR tuberculosis in HIV patients using GeneXpert MTB/RIF assay and comparing GeneXpert efficacy with fluorescent microscopy. Materials and methods: Four hundred and thirty three patients samples with age > 20 years having symptoms suggestive of pulmonary TB in HIV patients were included in this cross sectional study. Sputum for fluorescent microscopy and GeneXpert were processed. Rifampicin resistance was detected by GeneXpert. Results: Out of 433 samples, 36 sputum samples were positive by GeneXpert and 28 samples were positive by fluorescent microscopy. ‘p’ value was (<0.001) statistically significant, 5 cases of Rifampicin resistance were detected by Genexpert. Conclusion: GeneXpert helps in increased early case detection in lesser time to diagnose pulmonary TB in people living with HIV as compared to fluorescent microscopy and also to detect Rifampicin resistance with high specificity; it can be used for screening for MDR-TB for starting anti-tubercular treatment early.

Authors and Affiliations