Immediate immunosuppression caused by acute HIV-1 infection: a fulminant multisystemic disease 2 days post infection

A healthy 19-year-old woman had vaginal intercourse on a single occasion with an HIV-1 positive male from Gambia. Two days later she developed an acute HIV infection presenting as a fulminant multisystem disease that lasted for 35 hospital days and included: immediate immunosuppression with extreme CD4+ lymphocytopenia and combined with CD8+ lymphocytosis, neutropenia and hypogammaglobulinemia; intermittent spiking fever; pneumonitis; hepatitis; changing skin rashes; peripheral neuropathy with myopathy, and panencephalitis. P24 antigen was detected by Western blot on day 23 and seroconversion was detected by ELISA on day 25. Cultured lymphocytes from peripheral blood and cerebrospinal fluid grew HIV-1.