Clinical features of early HIV in the Edinburgh City Hospital cohort.

In order to describe the clinical features of HIV (non-AIDS), particularly injection drug use (IDU) related HIV, in patients attending the Regional Infectious Diseases Unit in Edinburgh, a prospective review utilizing the WHO staging system of the 680 HIV positive patients, 30% of whom were women and 68% were infected via IDU, was undertaken. Despite the fact that the majority of drug users and heterosexuals enrolled asymptomatic, by 1993, 71% of the patients had developed some HIV related clinical problem. The important clinical problems observed for the cohort were; minor skin problems, minor bacterial infections, major bacterial sepsis, oral thrush, oral hairy leucoplakia, significant weight loss of > 10%, HIV related thrombocytopenia and of course AIDS. Unlike previous reports from other areas, in Edinburgh drug users were not more likely than other risk groups to develop severe bacterial disease. Differences in morbidity and mortality rates by risk group but not by gender were noted but these may well be affected by the very different enrolment pattern observed in the various risk groups. The pre-AIDS mortality rates for drug users were remarkably similar to published rates from other centres.