DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2017.v05i10.019

Pages: 3901-3904

Over 33 million people are diseased with HIV globally. Opportunistic infections continue to cause significant morbidity and mortality in patients with HIV infection. Oropharyngeal Candida infection is the most common opportunistic disease in HIV infected individuals. The advent of highly active anti-retro viral therapy (HAART) has reduced the prevalence of these opportunistic infections including candidiasis. The introduction of HAART has permitted suppression of viral replication and a partial recovery of CD4 T-lymphocyte count in HIV infected patients. This was a cross sectional prospective study including 100 HIV positive patients receiving HAART therapy in our hospital. Oropharyngeal specimens were collected and processed as per standard mycological methods. Out of the 100 patients included in this study Candida was isolated in 24 patients. Non albicans Candida was the most frequently isolated species accounting for 79.16% and the remaining were Candida albicans accounting for the 20.83% out of 24 smear positive samples. There was a low carriage of Candida in the oral cavity of patients with HIV and a higher prevalence of C albicans, which may be the proper result of access to HAART for AIDS treatment. The use of accurate and reliable diagnostic methods which readily identify the non-albicans species could assist the clinicians in making the right therapeutic choices.