Clinical and Laboratory Profile of People Living with HIV/AIDS with Oral Kaposi Sarcoma.

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article was to evaluate the clinical and laboratory profile of people with oral Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) associated with AIDS (KS-AIDS), followed-up at a public university hospital in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, in the past 10 years. We identified patients diagnosed with KS-AIDS, presenting oral manifestation from January 2007 to December 2017. We searched, in the hospital information systems, the patient demographics, diagnostic data, treatment, image studies, and oral photographic records. Of the 39 cases of KS-AIDS identified at the institution, 14 (22.8%) presented oral lesions. There was a predominance of black men, with a mean age of 32.5 years. Most cases (85.1%) manifested signs of KS simultaneously with the diagnosis of HIV infection, with extremely low initial CD4 T cell counts (average of 52.6 cells/mm2) and visceral involvement (64.3%). The palate (32.1%) and gingiva (21.4%) were the most affected oral sites. Histologically, the tumors exhibited proliferation of spindle cells between vascular clefts and extravasated erythrocytes. Oral KS-AIDS was frequent in young black adult men, with severe immunosuppression and high viral load counting, mostly with lesions manifested in the same period of diagnosis of infection by the HIV.