Gajdusek D C
Natl Cancer Inst Monogr. 1976 Oct;43:1-11.
The history of the discovery of Pneumocystis carinii as the cause of interstitial plasma cell pneumonia of infants and of opportunistic infection with this parasite in the lungs of immuno-suppressed or severely debilitated adults and children is summarized with an extensive bibliography of the world literature through 1959. The problem of incriminating a nearly ubiquitous saprophyte as the cause of a disease and of elucidating the factors responsible for its causing pathogenesis in certain individuals is reviewed with special reference to slow and latent virus infections. Although formerly there has been much discussion of other possible etiologies of the respiratory syndromes in premature and debilitated infants and in children and adults who are immunodeficient or immunosuppressed in whose lungs the parasite is found, there seems no longer to be any room for doubt that P. carinii is itself the cause of these respiratory disease. The need of determining the genetic constitutions and the specific immunologic deficiencies that render some persons victims to this usually innocuous saprophyte is compelling, and the in vitro cultivation of the organism may aid considerably in unraveling these problems.
本文总结了卡氏肺孢子虫作为婴儿间质性浆细胞肺炎病因以及免疫抑制或严重虚弱的成人和儿童肺部该寄生虫机会性感染病因的发现历程，并列出了截至1959年的世界文献详尽书目。文中回顾了将一种几乎无处不在的腐生菌认定为疾病病因以及阐明其在特定个体中引发发病机制的相关因素的问题，并特别提及了缓慢和潜伏性病毒感染。尽管过去曾对早产和虚弱婴儿以及免疫缺陷或免疫抑制的儿童和成人肺部发现该寄生虫的呼吸综合征的其他可能病因进行过诸多讨论，但现在似乎毫无疑问，卡氏肺孢子虫本身就是这些呼吸道疾病的病因。确定使某些人成为这种通常无害的腐生菌受害者的基因构成和特定免疫缺陷的必要性迫在眉睫，而该生物体的体外培养可能会极大地有助于解决这些问题。
