Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Associated Skin Lesions

To the Editor.—  We write concerning the report by Knobler et al¹ of four patients with unique vascular skin lesions associated with human immunodeficiency virus antibodies or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In 1968 we saw a 61-year-old white man in New York who had received chemotherapy for several months for a malignant lymphoma. Shortly before his death, he developed numerous bright red tumors over the skin of all body areas. These began as small lesions resembling cherry angiomas, but rapidly enlarged to centimeter-size, sharply demarcated, easily eroded tumors (Figure); new ones appeared daily. Biopsies of several lesions were done and all appeared to be typical of pyogenic granulomas, with an epidermal collarette and thin-walled vessels in an edematous stroma, as in Figs 2 and 3 of the recent JAMA report. Our patient died without any spontaneous resolution of the lesions.At that time, which was before the first description