Left Ventricular Diastolic Dysfunction: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study among HIV Infected Children and Controls in Ilorin Nigeria - Abstract
Background: Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 10% of the world’s population is home to over two-thirds of the world HIV patients. Improved survival of these patients, is accompanied by challenges of cardiovascular manifestation. Hence, we determined the left ventricular diastolic dysfunction of HIV infected children and controls using the reliable tissue Doppler imaging. Methods: This was a comparative cross-sectional study among 100 HIV infected children and 100 HIV un-infected children as controls. The children were aged 2–14 years, recruited from both the Paediatric HIV and Paediatric outpatient clinics over 4months period. Data was analysed with SPSS® v 20. Mean and standard deviation of normally distributed data were determined. Categorical variables were compared using chi square test. Significant p was < 0.05. Results: The mean age of subjects and controls was 9.42 ± 2.99 years. The prevalence of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction was 46% among subjects compared with 14% of controls. There was a significant association between occurrence of left ventricular dysfunction and degree of immune-suppression p = 0.001. Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of left ventricular diastolic dysfunction among HIV infected children and more than thrice commoner in HIV compared with the controls. There was significant association between the degree of immune-suppression and the occurrence of left ventricular dysfunction in this study.