A study of effect of anti-retroviral therapy regimen on metabolic syndrome in people living with HIV/AIDS: Post hoc analysis from a tertiary care hospital in western India.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Indian guidelines for anti-retroviral therapy (ART) are changing. More patients are now on protease-inhibitor (PI) based therapy. While the association of dyslipidemia with nucleoside reverse transcriptase (NRTI) based regimens is well-reported, the effect of Tenofovir (TDF) or PIs has not been studied in detail in India. This study looks at the impact of ART regimen on Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) in people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA).

METHODS

This study is a post hoc analysis of a cross-sectional study in ART clinics of a hospital in India between Dec 2016 and Nov 2018. A total of 1208 PLHA on ART were part of this study. Chi square test, Mann-Whitney U test, logistic regression analysis was done.

RESULTS

The prevalence of MetS is 21.3%. This study found TDF based PI regimens had a two fold risk of MetS against patients of HIV on other ART regimens. Also, risk is significantly higher than both TDF based 2NRTI/NNRTI regimens and AZT based PI regimens.

CONCLUSION

Patients on TDF based PIs have a significantly higher prevalence of MetS. This has significance in India which relies heavily on TDF as a backbone of ART and is seeing increased use of PIs.