Managing weight gain in aging HIV patients is a new priority

According to epidemiological estimates, the number of people over 65 living with HIV is expected to grow in the next 10 years thanks to antiretroviral therapies that allow the infection to be transformed from a deadly to a chronic disease. “In the management of patients with HIV, the management of comorbidities becomes a priority, especially from the point of view of cardiovascular risk. Starting from the control of body weight gain which is closely related to the onset of the metabolic syndrome”, explains Massimo Andreoni, scientific director of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases (Simit). And in this sense, he continues, “help can also come from switching to combination therapy. The Drive-Shift3 study analyzed the switch in patients on successful antiretroviral therapy (therefore, with controlled viraemia) to a regimen that included ‘use of tenofovir with emtricitabine combined with doravirine “, and” provided promising metabolic data demonstrating an improvement in lipid-related values ​​in a large percentage of subjects. In addition, it showed data on weight gain ” . “We know that this problem is extremely relevant today – highlights the expert – because weight gain is commonly described with new therapeutic regimens. And we know that body weight increase obviously correlates with the development of the syndrome. metabolic disease that represents a problem in the patient with HIV infection. Because we already know that the presence of the virus is able to determine the inflammatory state that causes our patients with HIV infection to undergo so-called ‘non-AIDS related’ diseases With the Drive-Shift study, at the switch of the treatment it was seen as after 3 years, therefore a very long observation, the increase in body weight appears to have been extremely modest, with an average value of 1.4 kg. Furthermore, 82% of patients did not have a significant increase in the BMI (Body Mass Index) “.