Abstract: Objective: To explore the periodontal conditions of HIV patients, and to evaluate their periodontal conditions and risk factors. Methods: The periodontal health care knowledge and behaviors were analyzed, and the periodontal health status in 216 patients with HIV and 76 patients without HIV was checked, respectively. Results: There was no significant differences among the HIV patients with or without highly active antiretroviral therapy and the control group in oral health care and oral treatment methods. But the HIV patients were less often changing tooth brush, which had significant difference among different groups (P<0.01). In addition, HIV patients used tooth floss or toothpicks more frequent than control group, which had significant difference among different groups (P<0.05). In the examination of periodontal indexes, there were significant difference in BOP results and probing depth between the HIV+ patients and control group (P<0.05), but there was no correlation between the CD₄⁺ T cell counts and CAL. Conclusion: In this questionnaire, the oral health cognition of the HIV patients was similar to general population, only a few of HIV patients had periodontal health worse than those of non HIV patients.

Key words: HIV, Highly active antiretroviral therapy, Periodontal disease