[Change in the survival of Cuban AIDS patients with tuberculosis in the Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) era].

HIV infection affected 0.06% of the Cuban population and AIDS associated tuberculosis (TB) represented 4.4% of cases in 2004. The objective of this study was to determine the survival of AIDS patients with TB. 167 individuals of both sexes and ages between 15 and 60 years old were studied; all of them were diagnosed in the Havana's Tropical Medicine Institute "Pedro Kourí", Cuba, between January 1st 1997 and May 31st 2005. The Kaplan-Meier's method and the Long-rank test were used for the survival, and the Cox's multivariate method to identify the variables associated with mortality by means of SPSS 9.0. 78 individuals of the total died at the end of study, 71.8% belonged to the pre highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) era and 28.2% to the later period. From all deceased cases due to TB, 82.1% were diagnosed in the pre HAART era. The median survival was 41 months (CI=20-62). TB diagnosis in the pre HAART period, TB not being the first disease indicator of AIDS, suffering from candidiasis of esophagus before TB and a LTCD4+ count < 200 at the diagnosis of TB, were all independently associated with mortality. This study demonstrated the positive impact of HAART in the survival of Cuban AIDS patients with TB and also identified advanced immunodepression and opportunistic infections as predictors of mortality.