Wellness Update: North America: Medical News: HIV Infection Ups Heart Failure Risk - in Clinical Context, HIV/AIDS from MedPage Today

Medical News: HIV Infection Ups Heart Failure Risk - in Clinical Context, HIV/AIDS from MedPage Today: "All participants were eligible, but the investigators excluded subjects with coronary heart disease, angina, heart failure, or cancer at baseline. Because there were only 276 of them, women were also excluded from the analysis, leaving 8,486 patients, including 2,391 men with HIV (or 28.2%).

The median duration of follow-up was 7.3 years, during which there were 286 incident cases of heart failure and 1,096 deaths, Butt and colleagues reported.

After adjusting for age, race, and ethnicity, Butt and colleagues found the rate of incident heart failure was 7.12 per 1,000 person-years among those with HIV and 4.82 per 1,000 person-years in the rest of the cohort.

After adjusting for traditional risk factors, the hazard ratio for heart failure among those with HIV was 1.81, with a 95% confidence interval from 1.39 to 2.36, they reported.

The usual suspects were also independent risk factors, Butt and colleagues found: increasing age, African-American race, current smoking, body mass index greater than 30, hypertension, diabetes, and a diagnosis of alcohol abuse or dependence"