Prevalence and lethality among patients with histoplasmosis and AIDS in the Midwest Region of Brazil

Summary Histoplasmosis is a systemic mycosis that is considered an important public health problem. In this work, we performed a descriptive, observational, cross‐sectional and retrospective study with a secondary data analysis of medical records from 2000 to 2012 at a tertiary hospital. The study sample consisted of 275 patients with laboratory‐confirmed Disseminated Histoplasmosis (DH)/AIDS. The results showed that the prevalence of DH associated with AIDS was 4.4%. The majority of patients were young adult men with fever in 84.2%, cough in 63.4%, weight loss in 63.1%, diarrhoea in 44.8% and skin manifestations in 27.6% of patients. In the overall cohort, the CD4 counts were low, but not significantly different in survivors and non‐survivors. Higher levels of urea and lower levels of haemoglobin and platelets were observed in non‐survivor patients (