Bone marrow biopsy in the diagnoses of infectious and non-infectious causes in patients with advanced HIV infection.

Aims: Fever and peripheral blood abnormalities in patients with advanced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome are usually due to disseminated opportunistic infections. The objective of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic yield of histopathological and microbiological investigations of bone marrow samples from HIV-infected patients with fever and/or cytopenias.

Methods And Results: The diagnostic utility of bone marrow aspiration, biopsy and culture was retrospectively examined in 82 patients with HIV/AIDS (median CD4 count 51 microL(-1), range 1-430 microL(-1)) with peripheral cytopenias and/or fever attended at a large tertiary care hospital in Brazil during a one-year period.