Ultrastructural characteristics and DNA immunocytochemistry in human immunodeficiency virus and zidovudine-associated myopathies

Electron microscopic features of muscle biopsies from 13 human immunodeficiency (HIV)-positive patients who had myopathy while receiving zidovudine (AZT) were compared with biopsies from five patients with HIV-induced myopathy who were not treated with AZT. All specimens showed disorganization of the myofibrillar structures, along with a varying degree of nemaline (rod) bodies, vacuolization, inflammation, and endothelial tubuloreticular profiles. One untreated and all AZT-treated patients had cytoplasmic bodies, which in the latter were abundant, large, and irregular. Two untreated patients had a peculiar osmiophilic destruction of the muscle fibers, with numerous tubuloreticular profiles in the endothelial cells and brisk inflammation that included lymphoplasmatoid cells. The AZT-treated group had ubiquitous abnormal mitochondria that complemented the presence of ragged red fibers seen by light microscopy. There was subsarcolemmal proliferation of mitochondria, with marked variation in size and shape and proliferation or disorganization of their cristae. Paracrystalline inclusions were seen in one patient. Blind re-examination of the electron micrographs showed abnormal mitochondria that readily distinguished patients with AZT-associated myopathy from those with untreated HIV-induced myopathy. Immunocytochemistry using antibodies to single- and double-stranded DNA revealed severe reduction of mitochondrial DNA compared with the normal nuclear DNA. Although the myopathies associated with HIV and AZT share common myopathologic features, the mitochondrial abnormalities are unique to the AZT-treated patients. Since mitochondrial DNA is specifically reduced, the structural changes noted on electron microscopy are probably associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Zidovudine, a DNA chain terminator that inhibits the mitochondrial γ-DNA polymerase, is toxic to muscle mitochondria.