Introduction

Abstract

One need not look far in the contemporary literature of internal medicine, surgery, or pediatrics to find the term immunocompromised host or some variant of this expression used to connote the patient with impaired host defenses who is at risk of developing an opportunistic infection. Depressingly, this in part reflects the increasing public, medical, and scientific concern with the unprecedented epidemic of opportunistic infection and malignancy, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which is spreading throughout the world. More optimistically, this in part reflects major advances in the use of immunosuppressive therapy for organ transplantation, in the treatment of a variety of autoimmune conditions, and in the management of malignant disease.