Mortality Among Patients with Tuberculosis and Associations With HIV Status – United States, 1993-2008

This report provides data on the mortality among patients with TB and associations with HIV infection. To investigate the impact of HIV on risk for death during TB treatment in the United States, data were analyzed for all culture-positive patients with TB from 1993 to 2008. The proportion that died was determined and stratified by HIV test result. Mortality data were restricted to patients reported before 2007. Findings show that mortality among patients with TB and HIV decreased substantially in the United States since highly active antiretroviral therapy became widely available in conjunction with increased HIV testing of TB patients. However, in 2006, nearly one quarter of patients with TB still had unknown HIV status, and nearly 20% of patients with TB and HIV coinfection died.