Petros Beyene (PhD)Fisseha Bitew2018-06-252023-11-082018-06-252023-11-081996-05http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/3369The study was aimed at determining the prevalence of gastrointestinal parasites in AIDS patients with chronic diarrhoea. This prevalence was compared with that in two control groups: HIV seronegative diarrhoeal patients and AIDS patients (HIV seropositive individuals) without diarrhoea. Stool specimens were screened for parasite infection from clinically diagnosed hospitalized AIDS patients in seven hospitals in Addis Ababa. Of 147 AIDS patients with chronic diarrhoea, 74 (50.3%) were infected with one or more kind of parasites. Out of the 56 non-AIDS (seronegative) diarrhoeal patients 23 (41.1%) and out of the 43 non-diarrhoeal (seropositive) patients 18 (41.9%) were infected by a variety of intestinal protozoa and helminths. The parasites detected in AIDS patients only were crptosporidium spp, Isospora spp, and Blastocystis spp, Ascaris lumbricoides, Giardia lamblia, strongyloides stercoralis, Taenia saginata, Trichuris trichura, Entamoeba histolytica, and Hook worm spp. Among the intestinal parasites, Cryptosporidium spp was exclusively associated w.i th diarrhoeal AIDS patients (P < 0.001). None of the other parasites were significantly associated with AIDS patients. The high proportion of the study subjects who had diarrhoea in the absence of identifiable parasitic infections suggests that other infectious agents (eg. Bacteria and Virus) or mechanisms other than infectious agents are responsible for the diarrhoea.enBiologyThesis