THE CLINICAL PROFILE OF HIV INFECTED PATIENTS OF TEACHING HOSPITAL IN PUNJAB AND THE RELATION WITH ABSOLUTE CD4 AND CD8 COUNTS

The most common cause of HIV disease throughout the world is HIV-I which was first identified in West Africa. Worldwide , the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that there were 1 million HIV-1 infected people in South America, 0.5 million in Europe, 5 to 6 million in sub-Sahara Africa, and 30,000 in Oceania. Inspite of it being highly prevalent in the world there have not been many studies to study its clinicopathological behavior in this part of the world. Hence the present study was planned to study the clinical profile of HIV positive patients presenting to a tertiary care hospital, absolute CD4 and CD8 cell count in HIV positive patients at the time of presentation and the association of CD4 and CD8 cell counts with the predominant clinical infection at the time of presentation.