Lymphadenopathy in Asymptomatic Patients Seropositive for HIV

To the Editor: The Public Health Service has called for “a system for classifying HTLV-III/LAV [HIV] associated disease manifestations which is useful in the design, implementation, and analyses of therapeutic trials.”¹ The Centers for Disease Control system,² intended for broad application to public health activities, divides HIV manifestations into four groups: acute infection, asymptomatic infection, persistent generalized lymphadenopathy, and other manifestations. The assumption that the groups are hierarchically arranged according to the severity of disease appears to be widespread. This has resulted in the use of persistent generalized lymphadenopathy to distinguish groups of HIV-seropositive subjects in prospective studies and to…