COVID‐19 in a patient with HIV infection

Patel, Raj H.; Pella, Pablo M.

The worldwide pandemic of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has raised many challenges and uncertainties regarding disease management and prognosis in immunocompromised patient populations. The concurrence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19, presents an intriguing problem and only a handful of these cases exist in the literature, despite 37.9 million people living with HIV throughout the world. Previous reports suggest the possibility of a protective factor from standard antiretroviral treatment for HIV patients that could have significant clinical benefits for these patients when co-infected with SARS-CoV-2. HIV patients also generally present with atypical clinical presentation and have a less severe form of COVID-19 than the general population. Here, we present the first case of an HIV positive patient who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.