Absence of bacteremia with Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare in Ugandan patients with

Disseminated infection with Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare is the most common systemic bacterial infection in American patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Blood cultures for mycobacteria were obtained from 50 severelyill Ugandan patients fulfilling the World Health Organization criteria for AIDS and considered late in the course of their illness; 98% had antibody to HIV by ELISA. All blood cultures were negative. These data suggest that dis-seminated infection with M. avium-intracellulare is infrequent in Ugandan patients with AIDS, if it occurs at all. Before the epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syn-drome (AIDS), Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare (MAl) was of clinical importance in the USA as a rare cause of pneu-monia in patients with underlying chronic lung disease [1]. Disseminated disease due to MAl had been reported in only 37 patients [2]. MAl has emerged, however,as the most com-mon cause of systemicbacterial infection complicating AIDS in the USA [3, 4]