Complications of HIV/HAART: A Summary of Key CROI 2008 Research

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Low-Dose Growth Hormone in Patients With Lipodystrophy
• When Does Fat Loss Become Clinically Evident?
• Chromium Supplementation and Fat Loss
• HIV and Cardiovascular Problems
• HIV and Inflammation in STACCATO
• Aging and HIV
• Footnotes

Introduction

There are a lot of conferences now that are dedicated to specific issues within HIV, including metabolic complications. Some of the metabolic-related material gets diluted a little bit across the different conferences. Thus, it's not too surprising that we don't have any earth-shattering data regarding metabolic complications, especially about body shape changes, that were presented at this year's Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections [CROI]. There are some important data, which I'll mention in a little bit, about cardiovascular disease risk that I think was really one of the top stories of this conference.

Low-Dose Growth Hormone in Patients With Lipodystrophy

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I'm going to start with body shape changes, and talk a little bit about a study that looked at growth hormone.¹ Before you roll your eyes -- oh no, not another growth hormone study -- this one's a little bit different. I think that this study demonstrates the way that growth hormone studies should have been done. In fact, some people who really knew a lot about this subject had been advocating for it to be done this way, but it just hadn't happened until now.

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