Multiple isolates from Aids patients: aspects of an analysis by a genotypic marker and antimicrobial susceptibilities variations

Twenty-one Mycobacterium avium multisolates, from ten human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients, were typed by restriction fragment length polymorphism using as marker the IS1245 and characterized by minimum inhibitory concentration for nine different antibiotics. Two out of four patients harboring multisolates with different fingerprint profile, were therefore considered as having a polyclonal infection, since their isolates were taken from sterile site. This result confirms that polyclonal infection caused by M. avium occurs with a nonnegligenciable frequency. Analyzing the multisolates susceptibility profile of each patient it was observed that most of them were infected with strains having appreciably different antimicrobial susceptibility patterns, no matter what the genotypic pattern of the strains was. These results have strong implication for the treatment of the patients.

The influence of CD4+ T cells, HIV disease stage and zidovudine on HIV isolation in Bahia, Brazil

HIV-1 isolation was attempted on 72 individuals, including persons with known HIV infection and five without proven HIV infection but with indeterminate Western blot patterns, as well as on low-risk HIV seronegative persons. The ability to detect HIV-1 from culture supernatant by p24 antigen capture assay was evaluated by segregating patients by absolute CD4+ cell counts, clinical stage of disease, p24 antigenemia and zidovudine use. The likelihood of a p24 positive HIV culture was highest among patients with CD4+ T-cell counts below 200/ul and patients with advanced clinical disease. Use of zidovudine did not affect the rate of HIV positivity in cultures.