[Kaposi's sarcoma in Haiti: unknown reservoir or a recent appearance?]

Abstract

For a 29 months period, from June 1979 to November 1981. 11 cases of Kaposi Sarcoma (3 women and 8 men) have been diagnosed in Port-au-Prince. Two more cases (men) were seen in haitian refugees in Miami (C. D. C. report). Only one case of K. S. had been diagnosed in Haïti previously in 1972. The mean age was 37. Involvement of lymph nodes and viscera were frequent and the patients died within 24 months (the mean survival time after diagnosis was 5 months). This apparent outbreak probably has no relation with that one in U. S. homosexuals which appeared simultaneously. Drugs and homosexuality have no importance in haitian cases. K. S. in U. S. homosexuals and in heterosexual haitians has a bad prognosis as in Africans: they all differ from the classical european and north american forms by the age of onset, the frequent visceral involvement and the early death. The review of histological data and different etiological factors lead to think that it is the same disease everywhere in spite of those marked differences.