Publication:

Study of cutaneous manifestation of HIV disease in correlation with CD4 lymphocyte count

Background HIV infection is associated with numerous cutaneous changes even before the onset of immunologic dysfunction and AIDS. We all know that as search for reliable clinical indicators for management of human immunodeficiency syndrome in resource poor settings continues, cutaneous disorder can be considered among key clinical indicators for prediction of underlying immune status and disease progression. To study occurrence of various cutaneous manifestations and its correlation with CD4 cell counts in HIV infected Patients.

Methods 120 HIV positive patients above 14 year old with definite cutaneous manifestations attending dermatology OPD in Department of Skin, STD and Leprosy, in a tertiary care centre Dehradun (Uttarakhand, India) were studied from December 2013 to January 2016.

Results Among 120 HIV positive patients in our cross-sectional study, 50.83% of patients belonged to 31-40 years age group. Male to female ratio was 1.9:1 and heterosexual route was most common route of transmission. 69.17% of our study population had CD4 cell counts below 200 cells/mm3 and 23.33% of patients had CD4 cell counts <50 cells/mm3. Among these, commonest cutaneous manifestations were pruritic papular eruption, cutaneous drug reactions, molluscum contagiosum, seborrheic dermatitis. 17 patients (14.17%) had more than one cutaneous disorder with mean CD4 cell count of 121.5 cells/mm3 indicating advanced stage.

Conclusions At the end of study we concluded that cutaneous manifestations can be considered as a good clinical indicators for the progression of disease and underlying immune status in resource poor setting.