Introduction: Previous studies have shown that HIV infection is related to changes in the immune status of the mucosal surfaces. Such changes may also occur in the genital tract, since patients infected by HIV have the virus in their cervical secretions.
Methods: Fragments of the uterine cervix of 29 autopsied women were collected at a university hospital from 1985 to 2008, and were divided in groups with and without AIDS. Image J software was used to measure the cervical epithelium and to count the epithelial cellular layers. Langerhans cells (LCs) and IgG positive cells were respectively immunostained with anti-S100 and anti-IgG.
Results: Women with AIDS, when compared with women without AIDS, had thinner cervical epithelium (103.32 vs 116.71 μm), lower number of cellular layers (10.41 vs 13.66 μm), lower mean cell diameter (10.09 vs 11.51 μm), less number of total LCs (11.19 vs 23.08 LCs/mm(2)), and higher percentage of IgG positive cells (22.64% vs 16.06%). All these results were significant.
Conclusion: AIDS causes alterations in the structure of the cervical epithelium and in its extracellular matrix, leading to alterations in the local and systemic immunity, and triggering signs and opportunistic infections in the uterine cervix in the course of the disease.