Premium
Raymond Pearl memorial lecture, 1989: Cultural practices as determinants of clinical pathology and epidemiology of venereal infections: Implications for predictions about the AIDS epidemic
Author(s) -
Gajdusek D. Carleton
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
american journal of human biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.559
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1520-6300
pISSN - 1042-0533
DOI - 10.1002/ajhb.1310020403
Subject(s) - pneumocystis carinii , epidemiology , pneumonia , seriousness , immunology , medicine , virology , cytomegalovirus , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , pathology , viral disease , herpesviridae , political science , law , pneumocystis jirovecii
Abstract Sexually transmitted diseases newly introduced into diverse primitive and isolated populations have behaved differently in clinical severity and seriousness of the epidemics they have caused, because of culturally different sexual practices. Epidemic interstitial plasma cell pneumonia in the 1930s–1950s in eastern and northern Europe, caused by Pneumocystis carinii and accompanied by cytomegalovirus infection, was an unexpected AIDS‐like epidemic which spread slowly, then quickly and inexplicably disappeared. Newly recognized endemic HTLV‐I and epidemic HIV human retrovirus infections are behaving in a fashion similarly difficult to anticipate and predict.