Predicting CD4+ T Lymphocyte Count Using IgG and Total Lymphocyte Count in Newly Diagnosed HIV Infected Patients in Specialist Hospital Sokoto North West Nigeria

CD4+ T cell count and viral load monitoring are expensive and unavailable to most human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected people in Africa. There is a need to have another marker of HIV infection that is less resource demanding. Studies in human immunodeficiency virus infected adults have demonstrated association of total lymphocyte count (TLC) <1200/µl and subsequent disease progression or mortality. This study was carried out to determine the relationship of CD4+ T lymphocyte counts with total lymphocyte count (TLC) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) in HIV-positive highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) naïve patients attending Specialist Hospital Sokoto northern region, Nigeria. The study population comprised of 100 adult HIV-positive HAART naïve patients aged 19-65 years. The CD4+ T cell counts and these alternate biomarkers of study participants were measured. Spearman's rank order correlation was used for statistical analysis. CD4+ T cell count was positively correlated to TLC in group 1 and 3 (r = 0.558 and r = 0.530 respectively), and inversely correlated to IgG in group 1, 2 and 3 (r = -0.016, r = -0.002 and r = -0.276 respectively). Among the tested biomarkers, it was seen that TLC ˂135 cells/µl and IgG ˃20 g/l could be helpful in predicting CD4 cell counts of ˂200 cells/µl.