Is HAART hard on the heart?
From Seattle, at the 9th Annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections
Multiple-drug regimens known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, have been literally a lifesaver for people with AIDS. But several commonly used antiretroviral drugs, especially those called protease inhibitors, boost fatty acid and cholesterol concentrations in patients’ blood.
These are known risk factors for heart disease in healthy people. That’s led many physicians to suspect that heart trouble may lurk on the horizon for people taking drugs to control their HIV infection. Two large studies presented at the conference come to opposite conclusions about that risk.