A Clinicopathological Study of Mucocutaneous Lesions in Correlation with CD4 Counts in HIV Seropositive Cases at a Tertiary Care Centre in South India

Abstract

Background: Mucocutaneous lesions are one of the first clinical presentations of immunosuppression in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) seropositive patients that manifest at different stages of the infection that requires early diagnosis along with prompt treatment(1). Objectives: (1) To study the prevalence of mucocutaneous manifestations in HIV‑seropositive patients attending the ART center of our hospital in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. (2) To correlate mucocutaneous manifestations with CD4 cell counts. Materials and methods: 150 HIV positive patients above 18 year old with definite cutaneous manifestations attending ART center and OPD in the Department of Dermatology and venereology in a tertiary care centre Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh, India) were studied from May 2020 to May 2021. Results: Out of 150 HIV patients, who aged 20 -80 years with a mean age of 25, (23.8%) were 60 (40%) female and 90 (60%) were males, majority of the patients were labourers 50 (33.3%) by occupation , 41 (27.3%) had CD4 counts < 200, 73 (48.6%) had CD4 counts of 200–500, and 54 (36%) had CD4 counts > 500. The most common dermatological presentation was pruritic papular eruptions 24 (16.%) followed by cutaneous drug reaction 19(12.67%) and scabies 12 (8%). Conclusion: At the end of study we concluded that cutaneous manifestations can be considered as good clinical indicators for the progression of disease and underlying immune status in resource poor settings