Prevalence Of Anaemia In Hiv-Infected Patients At Arv Treatment Center, Abuth Zaria, Nigeria

Background: Anaemia in HIV-infected individuals has been known to be a common complication that correlates well with disease progression, patient survival and final outcome. Objective: To determine the prevalence of anaemia in HAART naïve patients at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), a designated national antiretroviral treatment center Methods: This is cross sectional descriptive study of HIV- patients receiving treatment at ABUTH treatment center from March 2002 to September 2005. Study process included documenting patients' bio-data, standardized medical history, hematocrit, reticulocyte counts, bone marrow aspirations and biopsy and CD4+T cell counts. Anaemia in this study was defined as hematocrit of less than 0.36L/L. Results were analysed using SPSS version 11 soft ware. Results: Out of 856 patients, 119 (13.9%) had anaemia. Median age of the patients was 34 yrs. Eighty (67.2%) were females while 39(32.8%) were males. Hematocrit levels ranged from 0.13-0.35L/L with a mean of 0.29L/L and SD of 0.48L/L in the anaemic patients and 0.37-0.44L/lLmean 39l/l +/-5 SD in the non-anaemic patients. Reticulocyte counts ranged from 2.8-12.3% (median 6.2%). CD4+ cell counts in all patients ranged from 40-1060 cells/ul, 49 (89.1%) of the anaemic patients had CD4 cell counts 350. Twenty one (15.9%) were in stages 1, 36 (26%) were in stage 2, 67 (48.5%) were in stage 3 and 13 (9.4%) were in stage 4 respectively. Type of anaemia based on morphology found 15.2% with dimorphic blood picture 33.4% with macrocytic picture while 51.4% had normocytic normpchromic blood picture. Conclusions: Anaemia is common in our patients and was more severe in advanced stages of the disease in patients with low CD4+T cell counts. Keywords: Haart, Hiv/Aids, Arv, AneamiaHighland Medical Research Journal Vol. 4 (2) 2006 pp. 27-3