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The National AIDS Treatment Advocacy
Project (NATAP) reports that individuals with untreated HIV and a CD4 count
below 350 have more than twice the risk of developing serious non-AIDS diseases
as those with levels over 500.
Researchers studied a cohort of
13,000 people from the ATHENA study in the Netherlands. The participants were
diagnosed with HIV in 1998 or later and had not been taking antiretirovirals
(ARVs). The researchers considered new diagnoses of major cardiovascular
diseases such as myocardial infarction, stroke and invasive coronary
procedures, liver fibrosis or cirrhosis, and non-AIDS-defining cancers.
In 18,641 person-years of follow-up,
208 participants (1.6 percent) developed new non-AIDS diseases in one of the
three categories. There were 82 with non-AIDS cancers, 79 cases of liver
disease, and 53 cardiovascular incidents. There was an overall likelihood that
6 percent of individuals with a CD4 count below 200 would receive a diagnosis
of one of these non-AIDS diseases every year. Compared with persons having a
CD4 count of 500 or higher, those with a CD4 count below 200 had more than four
times the risk, and those with CD4 counts between 200 and 349 had more than
twice the increased risk for developing non-AIDS diseases.
This study was presented at the 20th
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, March 3–6, 2013, in
Atlanta.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
