Background This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence and epidemiology of co-infection HIV/tuberculosis, in the period from 2003 to 2011, reported the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

Methods This is a cross-sectional, retrospective study. Data were derived from the linkage between regional database of tuberculosis (TBweb) and national banks of AIDS (SINAN SISCEL and SICLOM), which contains data from the compulsory notification of these diseases. The procedure of relationship data was performed by RecLink III software and analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 for Windows. The study was approved by the Research Ethics and obtained authorisation the use of data.

Results The study included 1,277 cases of tuberculosis, of which 338 had an HIV/tuberculosis, showing a prevalence of 26.5%. With regard to demographic variables, 244 (72.2%) were male, between 35–44 years (45.0%) and 151 (44.7%) white. Regarding the type of case, 308 (91.1%) were new and most individuals (58.9%) achieved cure. The most frequent clinical form was pulmonary in 201 (59.5%) cases. Regarding the CD4⁺ T lymphocyte count, 189 (55.9%) had lower rates than 200 cells/mm³ of blood and 102 (30.2%) had viral load between 1,001 and 100,000 copies.

Conclusions The study demonstrates the importance of HIV/TB coinfection in this county. In this sense, it stands out the need for public health efforts for the prevention and early diagnosis of HIV using HIV testing and counselling, as well as the active search for symptomatic tuberculosis.

Disclosure of interest statement The above authors declare that they do not have any potential conflict of interest in this study.