Study of continuous temperature recording in various opportunistic infections in people with HIV

Introduction and Aim: Fever patterns in various infections can give important clues in arriving at an early diagnosis. As most recordings of temperature are not continuous the full utility of this parameter has never been given its due importance. The infections that occur in HIV individuals have varied presentations and hence leads to a delay in its diagnosis and necessitating many investigations. If 24 hours’ temperature monitoring could give reliable patterns of temperature in these various diseases, it would be an inexpensive tool that could be used in these patients as the initial diagnostic approach of these patients. Materials and Methods: In this study on patients with HIV and fever, continuous tympanic temperature monitoring was done. The visual characteristics patterns were compared with the various categories of infections that occurred in these HIV individuals. Results were expressed using mean (standard deviation), median (inter quartile range) and proportion. ANOVA was used to find the statistical difference between various opportunistic infections and a P value <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: A total of 65 HIV patients were included in the study. The type of jerky temperature pattern could differentiate between bacterial, intracellular, tuberculosis and parasitic infections (Pearson Chi-Square =16.4, P= 0.058). The type of plateau phase could also distinguish these categories of diseases. The Pearson Chi-Square value for plateau phase was 10.511 with p-value 0.015. Conclusion: When these temperature patterns were applied for diagnosing the various categories of diseases in HIV their accuracies were as follows: For bacterial diseases (62.5%); intra-cellular (50%); tuberculosis (82.1%); parasitic (64.3%). The overall accuracy was 71%, showing that the temperature patterns could be used as an important starting point in the diagnostic approach in these patients.