Abstract
Purpose of the study Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leukocyte count in asymptomatic HIV-infected patients without central nervous system (CNS) opportunistic diseases has a positive correlation with peripheral blood CD4+ T-lymphocyte count. However, previous communications showed that this correlation is lost in patients with CNS opportunistic infections. This fact has been attributed to the low CD4 Tcell counts found in this population. These studies were undertaken in a low number of patients with different CNS opportunistic infections (cerebral toxoplasmosis, cryptococcal meningitis, Cytomegalovirus encephalitis, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, tuberculous meningitis) considered altogether for the analysis. To date, no study has evaluated correlation between CSF leukocyte count and peripheral CD4+ T-lymphocyte count in a cohort of patients with a single CNS opportunistic infection. The objective of this study was to address this issue in patients with cryptococcal meningitis.
Highlights
A positive correlation was found between peripheral blood CD4+ T-lymphocyte count and the absolute CSF leukocyte count (r = 0.44; p = 0.0123) in the statistical analysis
A strong correlation was found between peripheral CD4+ T-lymphocyte count and the CSF leukocyte count in patients with cryptococcal meningitis
ConclusionThis result suggests that, despite the advanced level of immunodeficiency observed in these patients, the peripheral blood CD4+ T-lymphocyte count has a major influence on the development of an inflammatory response in the CSF in patients with meningitis by Cryptococcus neoformans
Summary
DM Cecchini*1, AM Cañizal[2], H Rojas[2], A Arechavala[2], R Negroni[2], MB Bouzas[2] and J Benetucci[2]. Address: 1Hospital Muñiz, (Helios Salud and Cosme Argerich Hospital), Buenos Aires, Argentina and 2Hospital Muñiz, Buenos Aires, Argentina * Corresponding author from Ninth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection Glasgow, UK. Published: 10 November 2008 Journal of the International AIDS Society 2008, 11(Suppl 1):P252 doi:10.1186/1758-2652-11-S1-P252. Abstracts of the Ninth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection Meeting abstracts – A single PDF containing all abstracts in this Supplement is available here. http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1758-2652-11-S1-info.pdf
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