Co-existence of intestinal parasites and pulmonary tuberculosis from tertiary care referral center

Objectives: Parasitic infections are common in tuberculosis endemic areas. The co-infection of intestinal parasites indicates increase morbidity of tuberculosis patients, emphasizing on the importance of stool examination and treatment of parasitic infection in such cases. The study was aimed to find out co-existence of parasitic and Mycobacterium tuberculosis amongst the Tuberculosis cases.
Methods: All the patients were taken from NITRD indoor ,outdoor and casuality department during May 2016 April 2017 with diagnosis of Pulmonary tuberculosis and non tubercular patients. All the enrolled patients were examined clinically and were investigated for pulmonary tuberculosis and parasitic infections in laboratory. Laboratory investigation comprise of Ziehl Neelsen sputum smear examination and stool examination from freshly passed stool sample by direct normal saline preparation, iodine preparation and formal ether concentration.
Results: During the study 187 cases were in each group i.e pulmonary tuberculosis and non tubercular patients group. In smear positive TB patients out of 187 patients 53(28.34%) were positive for intestinal parasite with predominance of E. histolytica (19.79%) followed by Giardia (6.42%); while in non TB patients 40(21.39%) were positive for intestinal parasites, among them 30(16.04%) were Entamoeba. histolytica and 7(3.74%) Giardia lamblia. It suggests that intestinal infestations are more common in sputum positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients than in non TB patients which is statistically significant (p<0.05) also.
Conclusions: The study concluded that intestinal infections co-exist with tuberculosis and more common in sputum positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients than in non tuberculosis patients.