Diagnosis of Toxoplasmosis in Patients with AIDS by Isolation of the Parasite from the Blood

Abstract

Toxoplasmosis is a serious and common infection in patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and the cerebral form occurs in 10 to 40 percent of patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, especially in Europe.¹ In these patients, toxoplasmosis is most often curable, but making the diagnosis remains an important problem. serologic analysis is rarely helpful, a brain biopsy is traumatic, and the diagnosis still relies on improvement of symptoms or of lesions identified by CT after therapy with pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine. Therefore, detection of the parasite in the blood could represent a major advance in the diagnosis of toxoplasmosis in patients with AIDS.