| ABSTRACT
Immunocompromised patients such as those with chronic renal failure requiring hemodialysis
(HD) are at increased risk of developing tuberculosis (TB). The gold standard
screening tool used to detect tuberculosis is the tuberculin test, which owes its popularity
to its ease of administration and high sensitivity. This study was done to identify the
incidence of tuberculin test positivity among dialysis patients before transplantation and
also in volunteer living kidney donors.
Patients and methods. This cross-sectional, comparative study was done on 308 kidney
allograft recipient candidates, 80 potential living unrelated and related donors within a few
months before transplantation, and 855 control cases before employment. Patients were
tuberculin-tested using the Mantoux technique. The PPD (purified protein derivative)-
positive dialysis patients were compared with PPD-negative subjects, regarding age,
gender, dialysis duration, cause of chronic renal failure, and nutritional state as well as
PPD test results in potential donors. Patients were divided into 10 mm versus 10 mm
induration. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 11.0.
Results. The mean age of the donors was 26.6 4.6 years with a male:female ratio of
87.5%:12.5%. The tuberculin test was positive in 11.25% of cases, all of whom were males
with with induration 10 mm. There was no significant difference regarding the PPD
results and age. The mean age of recipients was 40.1 14.7 years with a male/female ratio
of 1.3:1. The tuberculin test was positive in 33.6% of recipient candidates. Mean duration
on dialysis was 2.5 1.2 years. No significant correlation existed regarding the dialysis
duration, cause of renal failure, c-reactive protein, erthrocyte sedimentation rate, and
response to tuberculin test. There was a direct relationship between age and PPD test
results (Pearson correlation 192).
Conclusion. Our results showed that more dialysis patients were PPD positive compared
with donors |