Food counseling for persons infected with HIV: strategy for defensive living.

More than a million people in the United States are now infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and by 1991, the United States will record 270,000 cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). At present, there is no way to estimate the number of AIDS patients who will be living in 1991. Intestinal diseases exert considerable morbidity and mortality on AIDS patients and persons with AIDS-related complex. The elevated frequency of certain intestinal infectious diseases in homosexual male AIDS patients has been attributed to sexual practices, but food seems a probable vector for some proportion of the infections in all AIDS-affected groups. Intestinal infectious diseases and resulting systemic infections can be life-threatening to AIDS patients. The infections may serve as cofactors that hasten HIV disease progression to AIDS, but absolute proof of this hypothesis is lacking. The longer the HIV-infected person maintains good general health and avoids potentially lethal infectious diseases, the better are the chances that effective treatments will be developed and made available. Foodborne diseases are generally avoidable, and increased education of AIDS patients and their physicians as to their nature is the key to their prevention.