Intestinal nematodes and pulmonary tuberculosis.
We report a significantly higher prevalence of intestinal nematodes in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) compared to a matched control group: 33/57 (57.8%) in patients with TB and 18/86 (20.9%) in the control group; OR = 5.19; 95% CI = 2.33-11.69; p = 0.000). When TB patients eosinophilia was also significantly higher among those with intestinal parasites (69.8%) compared to those without this condition (45.6%). We hypothesized that the immune modulation induced by nematodes is a factor that enhances TB infection/progression and that eosinophilia seen in TB patients is a consequence of helminth infection.
Tristão-Sá
Ricardo
R
Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, ES, Brazil.
Ribeiro-Rodrigues
Rodrigo
R
Johnson
Luciléia T
LT
Pereira
Fausto Edmundo L
FE
Dietze
Reynaldo
R
D000818:Animals; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004804:Eosinophils / Q000276:immunology; D005243:Feces / Q000469:parasitology; D006801:Humans; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D016555:Matched-Pair Analysis; D009348:Nematoda / Q000276:immunology / Q000302:isolation & purification; D009349:Nematode Infections / Q000150:complications* / Q000276:immunology; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000150:complications* / Q000276:immunology