This study evaluated the impact of HIV, CD4 cell count and ART status on TB treat-ment outcomes in 447 new TB patients.
Death rates were significantly higher among HIV-positive patients on ART and HIV-positive patients not on ART than HIV-negative patients. Our study has some conflicting results when compared to some data from high-burden TB/HIV countries. A study among patients accessing an integrated TB and ART service in South Africa showed no differences in death rates between HIV-positive TB patients on ART and HIV-negative TB patients, but similar results to ours when comparing HIV-positive patients not on ART to HIV-negative patients concerning death rates 19.
This discrepancy is probable connected to the dissimilar prevalence of other diseases between different populations, differences in institutional tasks and patient’s selection criteria. ART during a TB treatment event significantly improve mortality rates for the HIV-positive TB patients. These data evidently indicate that ART uptake should be improved with a closer monitoring in patients with HIV-associated TB. Our study re-sult that ART during TB treatment was significantly associated with improved mortality rates, is comparable to studies among patients accessing an combined TB and ART ser-vice in high-burden countries 11-13. In our study, we did not find an impact of CD4 cell counts on mortality. Several studies from Africa 20-23, established that higher CD4 cell counts (?200 cells/?L) were associated with reduced mortality, suggesting that patients with CD4 counts
