Bone marrow cytomorphological changes in patients co-infected with visceral leishmaniasis and human immunodeficiency virus

1 Pathology Department, Universidade Federal do Ceará – UFC, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil 2 Department of Clinical Analysis and Toxicology, Universidade Federal do Ceará – UFC, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil 3 Department of Clinical Medicine, Universidade Federal do Ceará – UFC, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil Alana Jocelina Montenegro de Castro1 Romelia Pinheiro Gonçalves Maria Helena da Silva Pitombeira3 Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a severe systemic infectious disease.(1) It has been recognized as an opportunistic disease in patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).(2,3) The analysis of the bone marrow of patients co-infected with VL and HIV showed dysplasia of erythroid, granulocytic and megakaryocytic lineages (Figure 1), besides the presence of plasmacytosis, cytoplasmic bodies, hemophagocytosis, granuloma and intracellular and extracellular leishmania amastigotes (Figure 2). These findings are found in the analysis of bone marrow of patients coinfected with HIV and VL; knowledge of these findings may be useful for the diagnosis and prognosis of patients.