[When should we think to primary immune deficiency in adult patients ?]

Primary immune deficiencies (PIDs) include rare and heterogeneous syndromes due to genetic abnormalities involving the immune system. In the registry of the French National Reference Center for Primary Immune Deficiencies (CEREDIH), the median age of clinical onset is 2 years, but 25% of patients develop the first symptoms after 15 years. A diagnosis of PID should be considered in the presence of an unusual association of infections, autoimmune pathologies, granulomatous disease, polyclonal lymphoproliferation or atypical lymphoma. PID management currently benefits from new antibiotic prophylaxis, the improvement of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation procedure and the development of gene therapy. In addition, the understanding of the pathophysi ological mechanisms led to new treatments targeting the pathways implicated by the genetic defects. In this review, we briefly recall the classification of PID. We illustrate the problem of PID in adults with clinical cases and then summarize the main principles of management in adults PID patients.