Mycobacterial antigens in pleural fluid mononuclear cells to diagnose pleural tuberculosis in HIV co-infected patients

Table 4 Relationship between culture, nested-PCR, bacterial DNA load, CD4+ T cell count and levels of mycobacterial antigens in the tuberculous pleural fluid mononuclear cells based on Spearman’s rank correlation. The values shown are the correlation coefficients

	Culture	DNA load	Heterogeneous antigens	Cell wall antigen	LAM	Secreted antigen
DNA load	0.467^b
Heterogeneous antigens	0.198	0.155
Cell wall antigen	−0.067	0.270	0.259
LAM	0.217	0.079	0.442^a	0.370^a
Secreted antigen	0.032	0.088	0.625^b	0.663^b	0.439^a
N-PCR	−0.394^a	− 0.938^b	− 0.236	−0.117	− 0.110	−0.055
CD4+ T cell count	−0.507^b	−0.341	− 0.184	−0.272	− 0.050	−0.122

^aCorrelation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed), ^bCorrelation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). N-PCR Nested PCR
DNA load is measured based on the number of positives among triplets from each case

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