The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS): Insights into the immunopathogenesis of the pulmonary involvement.

The lung is involved in more than 50 per cent of patients with the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and pulmonary abnormalities can be easily investigated using the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL). Besides providing information on the type of infecting microorganism, BAL has been used to characterize immunocompetent cells from the lower respiratory tract in these patients. This allows new insights into the immunopathogenetic mechanism involved in the persistence of opportunistic pulmonary infections and in the uncontrolled viral replication. This paper emphasizes the value of BAL evaluation as a simple and useful method for investigating the involvement of the distal respiratory tract in AIDS patients. A particular attention is payed on the immunological pulmonary abnormalities of this epidemic immunodeficiency syndrome.