An estimate of the contribution of HIV infection to the recent rise in tuberculosis in England and Wales

Abstract

In 1998 the number of tuberculosis patients co-infected with HIV in England and Wales, though still small, had nearly doubled since 1993, with most of the increase occurring in London. As HIV infection may be undiagnosed in patients with tuberculosis, and tuberculosis may be unreported in patients with diagnosed HIV infection, the true extent of co-infection will have been underestimated by this study. In addition, constraints in coded matching make it inevitable that some reported co-infections are missed. Routine HIV testing of all patients with tuberculosis should now be considered, particularly in patients of white or black African ethnic origin under 55 years of age.