Endemic infantile pneumocystis carinii infection: the Shiraz study
Dutz, W.; Post, C.; Vessal, K.; Kohout, E.
National Cancer Institute Monograph 43: 31-40
1976
ISSN/ISBN: 0083-1921 PMID: 1087958 Document Number: 104960
Epidemics of interstitial plasma cell pneumonia occur in orphanages among premature infants whose passive immunity due to maternal antibodies has been lost before the infants' own humoral immune systems have developed enough to cope with Pneumocystis carinii. In such orphanages infantile diarrhoea leads to marasmus and deficient immune response in infants 3 to 4 months after birth. The P. carinii organisms in the alveoli elicit a plasma cell response in the interstitial tissues of the lung which may be so massive as to cause asphyxiation. A description is given of such epidemics at the Shiraz Orphanage, Iran. Between 1961 and 1967 there were 300 autopsies on children under one year old and in 68 death was due to P. carinii. Detailed descriptions are given of studies on these infants before and after death. Since 1968 the disease has been reduced to small proportions.