HIV and paraquat poisoning: fighting fire with fire?

Though the cases of HIV patients with paraquat (PQ) poisoning are rare, we still found the common features. These recovered HIV patients tended to result in much less lung injury, and had low CD4⁺ T lymphocyte levels due to HIV infection, which meant they were under the immunosuppressive condition during treatment. This may be conducive to relieve the acute inflammation and lung fibrosis induced by PQ. Thus, we consider the immunosuppressive therapy for PQ poisoning to be appropriate. However, the drugs used currently may be not optimal for toxic patient. As next step, we will add the CD4⁺ T lymphocyte-targeted immunosuppressive drug to treat PQ poisoning patients.