Opportunistic Infections in HIV-Infected Patients Differ Strongly in Frequencies and Spectra between Patients with Low CD4+ Cell Counts Examined Postmortem and Compensated Patients Examined Antemortem Irrespective of the HAART Era
Abstract
Objective AIDS-related mortality has changed dramatically with the onset of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which has even allowed compensated HIV-infected patients to withdraw from secondary therapy directed against opportunistic pathogens. However, in recently autopsied HIV-infected patients, we observed that associations with a broad spectrum of pathogens remain, although detailed analyses are lacking.
Therefore, we focused on the possible frequency and spectrum shifts in pathogens associated with autopsied HIV-infected patients. Design We hypothesized that the pathogens frequency and spectrum changes found in HIV-infected patients examined postmortem did not recapitulate the changes found previously in HIV-infected patients examined antemortem in both the pre-and post-HAART eras.
Because this is the first comprehensive study originating from Central and Eastern Europe, we also compared our data with those obtained in the West and Southwest Europe, USA and Latin America. Methods We performed autopsies on 124 HIV-infected patients who died from AIDS or other co-mor-bidities in the Czech Republic between 1985 and 2014.
The pathological findings were retrieved from the full postmortem examinations and autopsy records. Results We collected a total of 502 host-pathogen records covering 82 pathogen species, a spectrum that did not change according to patients' therapy or since the onset of the epidemics, which can probably be explained by the fact that even recently deceased patients were usually decompensated (in 95% of the cases, the last available CD4(+) cell count was falling below 200 cells*mu l-1) regardless of the treatment they received.
The newly identified pathogen taxa in HIV-infected patients included Acinetobacter calcoaceticus, Aerococcus viridans and Escherichia hermannii.