HIV-positive adults ages 18 to 34 may be more likely to suffer coronary heart disease than HIV-negative persons their age, a new UCLA study suggests. Reported in the August issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, the findings emphasize the need for physicians to monitor HIV patients' cardiac health.

"Our study suggests that coronary heart disease may be accelerated in younger HIV-infected people," said Dr. Judith Currier, a researcher at the UCLA AIDS Institute and associate professor of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "It's important for physicians to incorporate heart-disease risk prevention into HIV primary care."

Currier and her associates reviewed six years of claims data from 28,513 HIV-positive Medi-Cal patients and 3,054,696 HIV-negative Medi-Cal patients. Both groups were 18 or older and had been free of heart disease for at least one year from Medi-Cal enrollment. The scientists did not include patients whose coronary heart-disease diagnosis preceded their HIV infection diagnosis.

After adjusting for available data on age, gender, antiretroviral therapy, hypertension and diabetes, Currier and her colleagues compared the rate and risk for coronary heart disease between the two populations. Then the researchers evaluated the relationship between the HIV patients' use of antiretroviral therapy and the number of first-time coronary heart-disease incidents in their group.

Currier's team uncovered a number of surprising results:

• The rate of coronary heart disease in HIV-infected men aged 18 to 34 and HIV-infected women aged 18 to 44 -- while very low -- was still statistically significantly higher than in HIV-negative people in those age groups. For example, the rate of coronary heart disease in 18- to 34-year-old HIV-positive men was 1.64 incidents per 100 patient years compared to 0.76 incidents per 100 patient years in HIV-negative men.
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Contact: Elaine Schmidt
elaines@support.ucla.edu
310-794-2272
University of California - Los Angeles
22-Jul-2003


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