What is it about?
Pneumocystis carinii is an opportunistic pathogen that causes potentially fatal pneumonia in immunocompromised or immunosuppressed patients. P. carinii pneumonia (PCP) continues to be a common AIDS-defining illness associated with significant mortality in both adults (8%) and children. This study found evidence of infection with mixtures of genotypes in a majority of specimens from HIV patients. Our sequence analysis provides evidence in support of infection with more than one type of P. carinii .
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Why is it important?
The typing of sequences of Pneumocystis DNA at a locus where multibase polymorphisms occur, such as the ITS regions of the nuclear rRNA operon, can be useful for epidemiologic studies and specifically for investigation of the possibility of person-to-person transmission. It has also made it possible to determine whether recurrent infections are due to the relapse of a previous infection or a new infection.
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This page is a summary of: Genetic Diversity of Pneumocystis carinii f. sp. hominis Based on Variations in Nucleotide Sequences of Internal Transcribed Spacers of rRNA Genes, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, April 2002, ASM Journals,
DOI: 10.1128/jcm.40.4.1146-1151.2002.
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