Nonspecific inflammatory dermatoses of patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease

HIV disease associated dermatoses are of various types. In many occasions cutaneous erutpions help early diagnosis of HIV infection and it has been observed that cutaneous eruptions are noticed at the time when the level of immune competence deteriorates to a range where opportunistic infections often appear. There is a group of cutaneous lesions which is clinically nonspecific and called poorly defined inflammatory dermatoses of HIV disease. In this study we tried to evaluate the so-called nonspecific dermatoses of HIV infection. We found that eight (22%) out of the thirty six patients with HIV disease associated dermatoses did not have cutaneous lesions of any specific disease entity. However, it was interesting to note that six out of these eight patients had subtle underlying histological changes suggestive of skin diseases known to be associated with HIV disease.