Original Research Article
Year: 2017 | Month: February | Volume: 7 | Issue: 2 | Pages: 275-280
Prevalence of Intestinal Parasites among HIV Seropositive Individuals at Mettu Karl Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia (Preliminary Study)
Solomon Yeshanew1, Teshome Tadesse2
1Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Public Health and Medical Sciences, Mettu Univer-sity, Mettu, P.O.Box: 318, Ethiopia.
2Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural and Computational Sciences, Mettu University, Mettu,
P.O.Box: 318, Ethiopia.
Corresponding Author: Solomon Yeshanew
ABSTRACT
Recently reported studies showed that, intestinal parasitic infections disturb anti-HIV immune response and facilitate the faster HIV viral replication. This phenomenon accelerates the progression of AIDS. A hospital based cross-sectional study was conducted at Mettu Karl hospital from March to June, 2013 to determine the prevalence rate of intestinal parasites in HIV seropositive and ART naïve individuals. Stool specimens from the total of 96 individuals enrolled in the study were screened for intestinal parasitic infections using direct wet mount and formol-ether concentration methods. The overall prevalence of parasitic infection was 60(62.5%); of which 49(51.1%) were infected only with a single parasite and 11(11.4%) were found with mixed infections. Five species of intestinal parasites including Entamoeba histolytica/dispar (38.9%), Giardia lamblia (22.2%), Ascaris lumbricoids (26.4%), Trichuris trichuria (8.3%) and Tapeworm (4.2%) cases were diagnosed from the study participants. Even though it was not significant (P>0.05), the socio-demographic characteristics of the study participants such as Age, Income and Family size were found in association with the rate of parasitic infection. The overall result indicates, intestinal parasites and HIV co-infection is high in the study area. Thus, anti-intestinal parasite Mass Drug Administration to HIV infected individuals is urgently needed.
Key words: ART-naïve, HIV/AIDS, Intestinal parasites, Mixed-infections, Socio-demographics.