Primary Immune Deficiency (PID)

Primary Immune Deficiencies (PID’s) are conditions that lead to more frequent, or more severe, or more unusual infections in patients. They are inborn abnormalities of our immune system.

Conditions like allergy malnutrition, diabetes, HIV disease, the use of immune suppressing medication, cystic fibrosis and others may also lead to more complicated infections. We refer to them as the secondary reasons for immune deficiency.

1. When should I be worried about a possible PID?

The most common problem related to PID is an increased susceptibility to infections. Infections are quite common in humans. The “SPUR” acronym comes in quite handy to warn about a possible PID.

SPUR stands for serious, persistent, unusual and recurring infections.

Your doctor should be concerned about a possible PID when your infections are serious, persistent, unusual or too frequent and especially if it is also associated with findings like a family history of complicated infections, infections of different systems in your body, infections requiring hospital admission, poor weight, inborn anatomic abnormalities, and a repeated low lymphocyte count on your blood count.

Your doctor should first exclude the secondary (not inborn) reasons for complicated infections before considering a PID.

2. What does PIDDSA stand for?

PIDDSA is the medical professional working group of the Allergy Society of South Africa.

3. What does PIDDSA offer?

PIDDSA currently assists doctors with PID articles, guidelines, a web page, dedicated PID workshops and congress sessions. PIDDSA also supports the patient organisation for PID (PiNSA)

4. What can PIDDSA do for you?

If you or your child have been diagnosed with a PID, or are experiencing severe, recurrent or unusual signs of infections, this site may be able to direct you to sources of information for help.

We are currently not resourced to answer individual questions and requests, but we would welcome your ideas and needs to be communicated to the Foundation website editor.