Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia in Latin America. A public health problem?

Abstract

Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PcP) is a well-recognized major opportunistic infection in HIV-infected patients. During the 1980s, the HIV pandemic turned PcP into a major worldwide medical and public health problem. With the introduction of Pneumocystis chemoprophylaxis and the development of highly active antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the treatment of HIV infection, there has been a decrease in PcP incidence in developed countries. However, the prevalence of AIDS-related PcP in developing countries remains high because a lot of people do not have access to ART or ignore their HIV infection status. This article discusses the information available about PcP among Latin American countries where there is a great regional heterogeneity in the prevalence of HIV infection and in ART coverage, as well as in the observed frequencies of PcP that range from 5.9 to 55% in this area.

Keyworks::

• epidemiology
• Latin America
• Pneumocystis jirovecii
• Pneumocystis pneumonia

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Sammy Harwood for his review of the manuscript and his suggestions.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was supported by the ‘Red Iberoamericana sobre Pneumocystosis’ (212RT0450) in the framework of The Ibero-American Programme for Science, Technology and Development (CYTED). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.