ABSTRACT
Background: Anaemia is a common feature among HIV infected people and has been uniformly demonstrated that the severity of anaemia increase the morbidity and mortality in PLWH independent of CD4 count. There are wide variations in the prevalence of anaemia from different countries all over the world and gender specific variation observed in different studies. Aims and Objectives: Aims of our study were to study the different types and the various etiologies of anaemia in newly diagnosed HIV infected adults. Also to find out the relation between absolute CD4 counts and severity of anaemia. Methods: Fifty newly diagnosed HIV infected adults with anaemia were included in the study. Study conducted from July 2014 to June 2015 at a tertiary care hospital and medical teaching institute in eastern India. Detailed medical history was taken, thorough physical examination was done and relevant routine laboratory investigations were done in all patients. Few special investigations were done in selected patients. Results: In this study 70 % of the patients belonged to the lower socio economic group and 58% of the cases were addicted to alcohol which is also a significant associated risk factor. The mean CD4 count was 170.1 with a standard deviation of 123.16. The mean Hb% of the population was 7.13 with a standard deviation of 1.27031492. The most common etiology found was anaemia of chronic disease (34%) and other etiologies were HIV induced myelodysplasia (32%), iron deficiency anaemia (16%), helminth infection (14%) and vitamin B12 deficiency leading to megaloblastic anaemia was seen in 4% cases. Conclusion: Anaemia of chronic disease is the most common etiology, which has correlation with disease activity.