The patient tested positive for Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) in addition to oral candidiasis, also known as thrush. Gottlieb arranged to receive a scraping of his lung tissue through a non-surgical procedure. When the patient began having breathing difficulties, Dr. Gottlieb encountered his first patient with unusual infections in November 1980, when one of his medical school residents reported a young patient suffering from a severe yeast infection in his throat. Michael Gottlieb, a young immunologist at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles).ĭr. The initial five-patient study was reported to the CDC by Dr. The edition of the MMWR marked the first official reporting of what would become known as the AIDS epidemic. Two of the young men were already dead by the time the report was published.
The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report described the men as having additional infections, indicating that their immune systems were compromised.