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HIV infection may elevate risk for HF
Butt A. Arch Intern Med. 2011;171:737-743.
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Among more than 8,000 male veterans, HIV infection proved to be an important risk factor for HF, even after adjusting for traditional risk factors, according to a study appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the study, researchers examined 8,486 participants (28.2% HIV-infected; median age, 48 years) who were enrolled in the Veterans Aging Cohort Study Virtual Cohort and the 1999 Large Health Study of Veteran Enrollees from January 2000 to July 2007. Participants were excluded if they were diagnosed with cancer, with the exception of non-melanoma skin cancer, or if they were female, due to the small number of women enrolled (n=276).
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Over the study’s median follow-up of 7.3 years, 286 incident HF events were reported. After adjusting for age, race and ethnicity, the incidence of HF was 7.12 per 1,000 person-years among those infected with HIV and 4.82 per 1,000 person-years among those not infected. This led to a notably higher risk for HF among those with HIV infection (HR=1.81; 95% CI, 1.39-2.36), which remained similar among veterans who did not have a CHD event or alcohol dependency before the incident HF event.
Additionally, compared with HIV-uninfected participants, ongoing viral replication (HIV-1 RNA level ≥500 copies/mL) among those with HIV infection was linked with a higher risk for developing HF (HR=2.28; 95% CI, 1.57-3.32), whereas infected veterans with baseline and recent HIV-1 RNA level of less than 500 copies/mL did not have an increased risk for HF.
For future research, the study authors suggested that additional work be done to fully characterize the association between HIV infection and HF, and to understand the underlying mechanisms.
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