title: Intestinal nematodes and pulmonary tuberculosis.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, ES, Brazil.
authors.forename: Ricardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tristão-Sá
authors.forename: Rodrigo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ribeiro-Rodrigues
authors.forename: Luciléia T
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Fausto Edmundo L
authors.initials: FE
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.forename: Reynaldo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dietze
mesh_terms: 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