600 Infections in 14 Patients with Common Variable Immunodeficiency, Retrospective Study

BACKGROUND: Common variable immunodeficiency is a heterogeneous syndrome of primary antibody production failure. It affects 1 in 10000 to 50000 individuals, and is the most frequent primary immunodeficiency producing relevant clinical symptoms in adults and children. The hallmark of this disease is recurrent bacterial infections, usually of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract. Onset is mainly in children aged 1 to 5 years, adolescents aged 16 to 20 years, and adults (fifth decade).1 METHODS: We assessed retrospectively recurrent infections in 14 patients with definitive diagnosis of CVID, for a period of 2 months through the review of their medical records. RESULTS: Ten patients were female (71.4%) and 4 were male (28.5%). The average age was 34 years. The average age of diagnosis of CVID was 27.5 years with an age range from 6 to 60 years. In 9 patients (64%) of the total studied CVID diagnosis was made in adulthood. All patients had a history of respiratory infection process in the following distribution: in 9 patients (64%) found a history of bronchiectasis, in 8 patients (57%) was found rhinosinusitis, and pneumonia; in 5 patients (35%) recurrent or chronic otitis media and one patient was a history of pulmonary tuberculosis. The lower urinary tract infection was found in 11 patients (78%), chronic diarrhea in 5 patients (35%), osteomyelitis in 1 patient. CONCLUSIONS: Recurrent infections of the respiratory tract specifically low and high and / or gastrointestinal infections should lead to systematic evaluation in which the primary immunodeficiencies are included as CVID.