Gastrointestinal Kaposi's sarcoma associated to AIDS. Case report

In this paper, we describe a particular clinical case of gastrointestinal Kaposi's sarcoma associated with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in a 51-year-old female patient who survived 6 years without anti-retroviral treatment after the diagnosis of HIV infection. The patient was admitted to our hospital with fever, skin lesions in both upper limbs and thighs (one day of evolution) and dry cough (about a month of evolution). She was admitted to the General Internal Medicine Service for control, diagnosis and treatment. An upper digestive bleeding was detected there. Once referred to our Gastroenterology Service, an appropriate selection of tests (anamnesis, gastric video endoscopy, histology) was carried out. In the upper gastric video endoscopy, several epithelial lesions were observed and a presumptive diagnosis of Kaposi's sarcoma was obtained. The diagnosis was finally confirmed by chain polymerase reaction (PCR) amplifcation of HHV8 DNA. This finding highlights the contribution of the molecular biology laboratory that allowed in this case the first molecular identification in our institution of the causative agent of Kaposi's syndrome with gastrointestinal manifestations.