[Initial assessment of the use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in diagnosis of tuberculosis among patients of the Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of AIDS].

This initial report on the use of PCR in diagnosis of TB was based on a group of 180 patients observed in the AIDS Diagnosis and Therapy Center in Warsaw. Out of 6 patients with positive results of PCR assay for MTB, five had positive AFB smears in induced sputum or BAL, two had positive MTB cultures. Five of them were treated with tuberculostatic drugs with clinical improvement and had negative sputum PCR MTB results after several weeks.

[Initial evaluation of the diagnostic usefulness of tuberculin tests among the patients of the Center of Diagnosis and Treatment of AIDS].

Tuberculin and Candida skin tests were done on 98 HIV(+) and 42 control HIV(-) patients of AIDS Diagnosis and Therapy Center in Warsaw. Prevalence of the positive Tuberculin tests in the control group was 29% and it was not significantly different from those groups of patients HIV(+) whose CD4 cell count was higher than 350. For those with CD4 cell count 350 or below, tests were positive only in two cases both of the patients with active tuberculosis.