Reducing the Impact of Opportunistic Infections in Patients With HIV Infection
New Guidelines
- Jonathan E. Kaplan, MD;
- Henry Masur, MD;
- Harold W. Jaffe, MD;
- King K. Holmes, MD, PhD
- From the National Center for Infectious Diseases (Drs Kaplan and Jaffe) and the National Center for Prevention Services (Dr Kaplan), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md (Dr Masur); and the Center for AIDS and STDs, University of Washington, Seattle (Dr Holmes).
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
As many as 1 million individuals in the United States are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).1 For these persons, and especially for the approximately 250 000 who have severe immunosuppression as measured by a CD4+ lymphocyte count below 0.20×109/L (200/μL) (includes persons with [T. Green, PhD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), unpublished results, 1994] and without2 AIDS-defining illnesses) opportunistic infections exact a heavy toll in terms of quality and length of life. Among patients with severe immunosuppression, the cumulative risk of serious opportunistic infection has been estimated to be 33% after 1 year and 58% after 2 years.3 In addition to the morbidity and mortality associated with these opportunistic infections, treatment of these illnesses costs billions of dollars annually.
The last 5 years have witnessed a gratifying surge in our knowledge of the environmental sources of opportunistic pathogens, ways to reduce
Footnotes
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Reprint requests to Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Mailstop G-29, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333 (Dr Kaplan).
