Smoking and Opportunistic Infections


Smoking and Opportunistic Infections

Being Alive Newsletter, Being Alive/Los Angeles - May 1993
Garance Franke-Ruta

At the VIIIth International Conference on AIDS in Amsterdam last July, a few abstracts associated smoking with the development of certain opportunistic infections and poor outcomes. A group from California found that people diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis were four times more likely to have smoked within the last 30 days than people diagnosed with other opportunistic infections. The organism that causes the meningeal infection (inflammation of the lining of the brain), Cryptococcus neoformans, is believed to enter the body through the lungs. The authors postulate that smoking impaired lung defenses might allow the organism to colonize the lungs, which precedes its spread to the central nervous system.

In an abstract dealing with oral lesions in smokers and nonsmokers, another California group found that smoking was associated with a higher risk of developing oral thrush, but a lower risk of developing oral ulcers. And in a second study to explore the association of smoking with the development of PCP, heavy smokers were found to be over three times more likely than light smokers to develop the infection. Intermediate smokers were also found to have an increased risk of PCP, regardless of T4 count, gender, ethnicity, or use of PCP prophylaxis.
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