Historia natural de la infección por VIH y sistemas de clasificación

Abstract

Since the description of the firs cases in 1981, infectión by the human inmunodeficiency virus has become one of the most important problems for world health. Spain today has the highest ra te of accumulated cases per inillion of all Europe. The natural history of the HIV infection is in creasingly better Known, that it is marked by a series of opportunist infections that may be mo re or less grave, until one of them or a neoplasia, brings about the death of the patient. From the beginning an attempt was mode to define when a patient was considered as an “AIDS case”, and patients were then classified in to different groups or states. This definition of the “case of AIDS” has chan ged over time, progressively extending the num ber of processes that indicate AIDS. The latest definition proposed by the CDC in 1992 has arou sed an important controversy between European and American experts. Furthermore it is not always easy to classify these patients. Of the various systems proposed and currently in use, that of the WHO is the one that appears to beast fit the natural history of the HIV infection. Finally, the search for prognosis markers capa ble of predicting the evolution towards AIDS, opens up an interesting lime that is of fundamen tal importance when making therapeutic deci sions