[Central nervous system pathology in children with AIDS].
The neuropathological manifestations of AIDS in children vary widely and includes, among others: cerebral atrophy, basal ganglia calcification, corticospinal tract demyelinization, and HIV encephalomyelitis with multinucleated cells. The purpose of this work is to inform the postmortem CNS findings in 14 pediatric AIDS patients which were studied from January 1986 to February 1992, at the Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez. Basal ganglia vascular calcification, HIV multinucleated cells, and corticospinal tract demyelinization, were significantly less frequent (P < 0.01) in our patients than those informed in the literature. Opportunistic CNS infections found in our patients were produced by microorganisms commonly described in adults. We think that these differences may be explained because the majority of our patients acquired the infection trough blood transfusion at an age in which the CNS is fully developed. The pattern of HIV transmission in our country has been changing recently with an increase in the number of perinatal cases. We also think that in the near future we will observe a change in the neuropathological findings of our pediatric AIDS population.