Gianotti-Crosti syndrome and human immunodeficiency virus infection

BACKGROUND: Patients with Gianotti-Crosti syndrome (GCS) present with a distinctive self-limiting acral papular or papulovesicular eruption associated with an underlying viral illness. Gianotti-Crosti syndrome in patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus has not been previously reported.

OBSERVATIONS: We report on two children infected with human immunodeficiency virus who had GCS. Both patients had clinical and histopathologic findings characteristic of GCS. The first patient had evidence of prior infection with cytomegalovirus, without evidence of active viral illness. The second patient had evidence of subclinical infection with cytomegalovirus, positive hepatitis C antibody, and active infection with Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare at the time the skin eruption began.

CONCLUSIONS: We call attention to a previously unreported skin eruption, GCS, in the setting of human immunodeficiency virus infection and emphasize that determining the etiologic factors for human immunodeficiency virus-associated GCS will be difficult; such patients will probably have a variety of clinical and subclinical infections that complicate this issue.