Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0021051 (immunodeficiency)
 71,517 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

A 33-year-old woman, seropositive for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), presented with progressive weakness and numbness of the lower extremities, gait difficulties, and urinary frequency. Physical examination revealed bilateral lower extremity weakness, a left-sided Babinski reflex, and a thoracic sensory level to pinprick at T8. Serum rapid plasma reagin was 1:64, and fluorescent treponemal antibody-absorption (FTA-ABS) was 4+. Examination of the cerebrospinal fluid showed a mononuclear pleocytosis and reactive FTA-ABS. The myelopathy responded promptly to high-dose intravenous aqueous penicillin. Syphilis needs to be considered in the differential diagnosis of any patient who develops a myelopathy in association with HIV-1 infection. Because of the diverse nature in which syphilis may affect the spinal cord, treatment with intravenous aqueous penicillin, 12 to 24 million units daily, for a minimum of 10 days, should be considered in any HIV-1-seropositive patient with a progressive, unexplained myelopathy and positive serologic studies for syphilis.
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PMID:Spinal cord syphilis associated with human immunodeficiency virus infection: a treatable myelopathy. 173 97

The most common disease of the spinal cord in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is vacuolar myelopathy. Pathology studies have demonstrated that vacuolization in the thoracic spinal cord is present in more than a third of patients with AIDS. The disease, however, manifests clinically only when the vacuolization in the spinal cord has become severe, with prominent myelin loss in the lateral and posterior columns. Vacuolar myelopathy presents usually with slowly progressing spastic paraparesis, accompanied by loss of vibratory and position sense and urinary frequency and urgency. In males, erectile dysfunction can be an early manifestation of the disease. The pathogenesis of vacuolar myelopathy is unknown but may be related to abnormal trans-methylation mechanisms induced by the HIV virus and cytokines. There is no known treatment for the disease, although therapy with methylating agents is being investigated. There are other rarer causes of spinal cord disease in AIDS, including a number of infectious myelitis and neoplastic and vascular myelopathies.
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PMID:Diseases of the spinal cord in human immunodeficiency virus infection. 1071 35