(1888PressRelease)
June 30, 2009 - A study published in the March issue of Postgraduate Medicine entitled “Risk Factors for Mortality From Primary Cryptococcosis in Patients with HIV” compiled and examined data about HIV-positive patients admitted to the hospital with cryptococcosis, a potentially fatal fungal disease. The doctors conducting the study hoped that by investigating these patients they could understand how the disease is spread, what its symptoms are, and how extensive the disease could be in the future.
In the article, doctors reviewed the records of 202 HIV-positive patients who were admitted to both the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Baltimore VA Medical Center for a case of primary cryptococcosis from 1993 to 2004. The study found that although the prevalence of cryptococcosis in the United States is decreasing, the number of HIV-positive patients admitted to these two hospitals did not decline during this period.
Many of the patients with this infection also developed meningitis, fungemia (the presence of yeast or fungi in the blood), or pneumonia, leading to further health complications; in some cases, patients showed symptoms of all three diseases simultaneously.
As a result, the study revealed a consistent mortality rate of 14% over the 12-year period, demonstrating the continued threat of cryptococcosis and the complications that arise from it in HIV-infected patients. Because of the retrospective nature of the study, the doctors were not able to make any concrete conclusions, although they do recommend this subject be pursued further so that the cause and proper treatment of cryptococcal infection can be identified and the mortality rate lowered.
The full article can be accessed on Postgraduate Medicine’s website.
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