Tuberculosis, incarceration, and HIV at a crossroads in Guyana.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to describe the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of patients dually infected with HIV and tuberculosis (TB) in Guyana.

Methods: The data for this study were obtained as part of a related project conducted to determine the prevalence of diabetes mellitus among TB patients in Guyana. From April to June 2006, a convenience sample of 100 patients was selected from those attending three TB clinics in Guyana and a structured questionnaire was used to collect relevant sociodemographic and risk factor data. The sociodemographic and clinical data of HIV-negative and HIV-positive patients with pulmonary TB were compared. Logistic regression was conducted to determine independent relationships between sociodemographic and clinical features.

Results: One hundred TB patients were considered for enrolment in the study, but since the HIV status was known for only 77 persons, these were included in the analysis. Thirty-one of the 77 (40.3%) were HIV-positive. Seventy-two of the 77 (93.5%) patients had pulmonary TB, 28 of whom were HIV-positive; the other five had extrapulmonary TB, three of whom were dually infected. Several social factors and clinical manifestations including incarceration at the time of TB diagnosis (p=0.01), cigarette smoking (p=0.05), homelessness (p=0.07), chest pain (p=0.001), hemoptysis (p=0.02), cough (p=0.08), and being acid-fast bacillus (AFB) sputum smear-positive (p=0.06) were associated with HIV-negative pulmonary TB. In the logistic regression model, HIV-negative TB patients demonstrated higher frequencies of complaints of chest pain (odds ratio (OR) 34.48, 95% confidence interval (CI) 4.35-250) and were more likely to be AFB sputum smear-positive (OR 11.97, 95% CI 1.91-74.76) than HIV-positive TB patients.

Conclusions: Guyana is faced with a particularly high burden of HIV infection among TB patients. Given the impact of HIV on the clinical presentation of TB, physicians managing HIV patients should demonstrate a high level of suspicion for TB among these patients. Incarceration is a strong correlate of TB, overall.