HAART and Mycobacterium avium complex in an HIV infected patient with severe factor VII deficiency

A clinical syndrome represented by the association of Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infection with initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been recently described in patients with advanced HIV disease. HAART-associated improvement of the immune status might convert a clinically silent MAC infection into an active mycobacterial disease. A 40-year-old man with severe factor VII deficiency, advanced HIV-1 disease, a CD4 + lymphocyte count of 15 cells microL-1 (CDC stage A3) and 470,000 HIV-RNA copies mL-1 (measurement by NASBA system) underwent standard HAART (lamivudine, stavudine and ritonavir). Two weeks after HAART onset, the patient developed enlargement of the lymph nodes throughout the mesentery and after seven weeks a rapidly enlarging mass on the left side of the neck. Culture from a needle aspirate specimen revealed MAC. His CD4 + count had increased to 97 cells microL-1 and viraemia dropped to undetectable HIV-RNA copies. While continuing antiviral therapy, multidrug therapy for MAC infection (clarithromycin, ciprofloxacin, ethambutol, amikacin) was started with progressive improvement and cure of the neck mycobacterial infection and disappearance of the abdominal lymph nodes. HAART has been shown to offer significant clinical and laboratory benefits in terms of HIV disease with limited side-effects in Haemophiliacs. However, the clinical manifestation of an opportunistic infection should be mentioned as a possible complication of HAART in these patients, as well as in other categories of HIV infected patients, and in patients with congenital coagulopathies.