DOES TUBERCULOSIS REALLY CAUSE HYPERCALCEMIA

Hypercalcemia has been known to be associated with tuberculosis. In so me studies it has been reported to occur commonly. It seems that the s tudies in which tuberculosis was complicated by hypercalcemia were ret rospective and therefore the other causes of hypercalcemia could not b e excluded. We have a great deal of experience concerning tuberculosis and have not seen a patient with hypercalcemia due to tuberculosis it self. Therefore we aimed to investigate whether tuberculosis really ca use hypercalcemia in a prospective study. We evaluated 104 patients wi th tuberculosis aged between 14-85 (mean +/- SD 38.5 +/- 15) years, 73 males and 31 females, and 50 age-matched healthy subjects aged betwee n 19-70 (mean +/- SD 39 +/- 13) years, 33 males and 17 females. No sig nificant differences between the patients and healthy subjects were de tected in terms of 250HD(3), calcium and phosphate levels. Albumin lev els were significantly higher in the control group than in the tubercu lous group (p < 0.02). No significant difference was found between the calcium levels measured before the therapy (2.4 +/- 0.1 nmol/L) and a fter the therapy (2.4 +/- 0.2). We think that patients with tuberculos is are not at risk for hypercalcemia either before or during treatment and the development of hypercalcemia as a result of tuberculosis is r ather doubtful and needs to be clarified. (C) 1996, Editrice Kurtis