AIDS patient care and STDs
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AIDS Patient Care STDS · Dec 1996
Invasive pneumococcal infections in children infected with HIV are not associated with splenic dysfunction.
Children infected with HIV-1 are more likely to acquire infections associated with the encapsulated bacterial pathogens of childhood than their non-HIV-infected peers. The goal of the current study was to determine what proportion of community-acquired, invasive pneumococcal disease in HIV-infected children could be attributed to splenic dysfunction, as measured by enumerating the number of pocked red blood cells (RBCs) in peripheral blood. ⋯ Splenic dysfunction, as measured by the pocked RBC count, does not account for the increased occurrence of invasive pneumococcal disease found in children infected with HIV.