Adenovirus infection of the duodenum in an AIDS patient: an ultrastructural study.

Intractable diarrhea in a 40-year-old woman with terminal acquired immunodeficiency syndrome resulted from adenovirus infection of the duodenal mucosa. Electron microscopic examination of a duodenal biopsy specimen performed because of clinical suspicion of cryptosporidiosis or microsporidiosis showed pathognomonic viral particles in the nuclei of mucosal epithelium. Extensive sloughing of damaged mucosal cells may have contributed to the diarrhea, for which no other cause was found during either pathologic or microbiologic analysis.