HAIRY LEUKOPLAKIA AND HIV-2 - A CASE-REPORT AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Type 2 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-2), originally confined to We st Africa, has lately appeared with increasing frequency in Europe. Or al lesions affect a large proportion of patients with AIDS. Hairy leuc oplakia (HL), a clinical expression of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), is a lesion of the oral mucosa (usually the lateral margin of the tongue) t hat is observed in patients who are immuno-compromised due to HIV or, more rarely, due to immunosuppressive medication or other causes. We r eview the definition, clinical signs, histopathology, diagnosis, progn osis and treatment of HL, and report the (to our knowledge) first deta iled description of an HIV-2-seropositive patient with HL, which affec ted the lateral and dorsal tongue and was the first clinical sign of H IV infection (this patient was at that time only the second native Spa niard in whom unique HIV-2 infection had been detected). EBV detection and subtyping by in situ hybridization and polymerase chain reaction were performed in paraffin-embedded tissue from the HL lesion of the d orsal tongue; EBV-1 and EBV-2 were detected by the latter technique.