Autopsy patterns of disease among subgroups of an inner-city Bronx AIDS population

The Bronx, New York, has a large, inner-city, AIDS population which contains a greater proportion of women and intravenous drug users and a lower percentage of homosexuals than the U.S. AIDS population overall. Because this population is reflective of the evolving trends in the national AIDS population, our objective was to gain an understanding of patterns of infections, malignancies, and cause of death among these individuals. All autopsies (252) performed on patients with AIDS at two hospitals affiliated with a major academic center in the Bronx between 1982 and 1995 were reviewed. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) as an infection or as a cause of death (COD) occurred more commonly among patients who had been infected with HIV through sexual relations (p = 0.0002 and p = 0.0011, respectively). Bacterial pneumonia was the most common source of pulmonary infection, although Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia was more often a cause of death. A higher frequency of aspergillus infection in female subjects was also noted (p = 0.010). These and other observations may have ramifications for treatment and prevention in analogous AIDS inner-city populations.