the prevalence of pneumocystis jirovecii among patients with different chronic pulmonary disorders in ahvaz, iran

background and objectives: pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (pjp) is a chronic fungal infection that caused by p. ji- rovecii . disease is more prevalent among the hiv-infected patients. the colonization of pneumocystis in human respiratory system is associated with the airway inflammation and obstruction. the current study was conducted to identify the preva- lence of p. jirovecii among the patients with chronic pulmonary disorders in ahvaz, iran. materials and methods: in the present study, 115 bronchoalveolar lavage (bal) specimens were collected from patients. samples were subjected to nested-pcr with specific primers. the second pcr products were used for sequencing analysis. results: our findings demonstrated that 31(27.0%) of samples were positive for p. jirovecii . nine patients (29%) have tuberculosis (tb) followed by, 1(3.2%) hiv positive and 21(67.7%) miscellaneous pulmonary disorders. our results show that there was no significant differences between sex (male:female ratio, 17:14), tb, hiv and p. jirovecii in bal samples (p>0.05). conclusion: the current study is the first report from ahvaz and it showed a relatively high frequency (27%) of p. jirovecii among patients with different pulmonary disorders. in addition nested-pcr might be reliable technique for diagnosis of p. jirovecii , while the grocott's methenamine silver (gms) have a low sensitivity, which only two positive patients were identified.