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Metabolic Syndrome May Be an HIV Risk

Posted on: Tuesday, 26 December 2006, 09:00 CST

U.S. researchers find many people with HIV have the same two characteristics of metabolic syndrome and may also be at risk for zinc deficiency.

We determined that almost one-fourth of the study participants had metabolic syndrome, although this is lower than the incidence of metabolic syndrome in the population as a whole, says study author Denise Jacobson of Tufts University School of Medicine, along with Drs. Christine Wanke and Sherwood Gorbach. Strikingly, 77 percent of people with metabolic syndrome in the study had the same two defining characteristics, low HDL cholesterol and hypertriglyceridemia.

It appears that HIV viral load and metabolic syndrome are associated, as people with both HIV and metabolic syndrome were likely to have a clinically relevant increase in viral load within six months of developing components of metabolic syndrome, according to Gorbach.

Using the same study population, Dr. Clara Jones Tufts and colleagues analyzed micronutrient levels of nearly 300 people infected with HIV on drug therapy.

We found that 40 percent of men and 36 percent of women in the study had low zinc levels, says Jones. "It has been thought for some time that low levels of micronutrients are associated with an increased viral load.

Both studies are published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Source: United Press International

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