Worrying new AIDS symptoms surface in KZN

The epidemic of HIV/AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal is expressing itself in ominous new forms, a local academic has discovered.

Urging the medical fraternity to be extra vigilant, Professor Runjan Chetty, professor of pathology at the Nelson R Mandela Medical School of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, said a recent study had discovered new symptoms of the deadly disease.

One new form was the bulging or distension of the large arteries to the head, neck and limbs, often causing stroke-like symptoms and loss of feeling in the lower limbs.

Prof Chetty said this was an entirely new development in the manifestation of the disease. He has just returned from a meeting in Canada, where he presented a paper on the new medical phenomenon.

He said the presence of huge swellings, often causing ruptured aneurysms, was the first symptom of HIV/AIDS in the 16 patients observed with this condition. A total of 40 patients with the manifestation had already been seen.

Professor Chetty said most of the patients who were studied did not have any clinically obvious signs of HIV infection and none of them were being treated for HIV/AIDS.

He said that two-thirds of the patients who presented with these symptoms were male and ranged in age between 18 and 38.

He said a colleague, Dr Nelson Moodley, from the Department of Surgery, was embarking on a PhD to determine the cause of these aneurysms from an immunological point of view.

Professor Chetty said another strange manifestation regarding HIV/AIDS had been noted by his team. Where the patient had already become HIV-infected, and the immune system compromised, TB was now masquerading as an inflammatory condition in the form of non-specific abscesses.

He said this development was presenting major diagnostic "pitfalls" for the medical profession.

If these abscesses were not treated as TB-induced and were instead treated as inflamed raised areas, the patient could die from TB.

Professor Chetty urged the medical fraternity to be extra vigilant in discerning both of these conditions.

The swellings, he said, represented a "new" variation in the outbreak of HIV/AIDS, and the abscesses caused by TB an "old" variation.

This was because TB was an old illness and was re-emerging in a highly dangerous way, alongside HIV/AIDS.