[Muscular involvement in the course of AIDS. Anatomo-clinical study of 17 cases]

We report 17 patients seropositive for the human immunodeficiency virus, with muscle tissue involvement in different stages of the disease. Some patients are treated with azidothymidine (AZT). Others have no opportunistic infections. In all cases, there are some muscular symptoms such as progressive symetric and proximal muscular weakness with myalgias, elevated serum muscle enzymes, abnormal electromyogramma and very often a peripheral neuropathy. The muscle biopsy reveals the following features: rarely a focal muscular opportunistic infection in advanced stage of the disease is observed; a polymyositis is quite often the first clinical manifestation of the disease; a myopathy with mitochondrial involvement is observed in some of the AZT treated patients; some cachectic, under nourrished, bedridden patients present a type II muscle fiber atrophy. We conclude that a muscle biopsy could help us in our therapeutic planning directing us to a corticotherapy in the polymyositis, mitochondriopathies and wasting syndrome. Interruption alone of AZT or associated with a treatment by carnitine could allow remission of the muscular pathology.