AIDS and the lung: update 1992. 1. Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

F Miller During the first 10 years of the AIDS pandemic the clinical features of the syndrome have been extensively reported. By January 1992 there had been 5451 cases of AIDS in the United Kingdom, 3391 patients having died, and 16 828 people were known to have antibodies to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with the potential to progress to AIDS. Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, despite widespread use of effective prophylaxis, rema opportunist pneumocystis pneumonia in patients immunosuppressed by malignancy, chemotherapy, corticosteroids, or HIV results from reactivation from a focus of organisms in the lungs that may, by analogy with tuberculosis, be the residuum of asymptomatic, self healed childhood infection. This assumption has recently been challenged by the application of molecular biology to the study of P carinii.