HIV doubles risk of heart disease, study finds

HIV-badociated cardiovascular disease has more than tripled in the last 20 years, with Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho particularly affected.

This is according to a research of the University of Edinburgh. An international team of experts, led by university staff, reviewed studies in 153 countries to determine the heart disease rate among people living with HIV.

Using a sample of nearly 800,000 among people living with HIV was double that of uninfected people.

The link between HIV and heart disease is poorly understood. Scientists believe that the virus can cause inflammation of the blood vessels, exerting pressure on the cardiovascular system.

The virus also increases the levels of fat in the blood and affects the body's ability to regulate sugar levels. More than two-thirds of HIV-badociated heart disease has been reported in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

In the last 26 years, the fraction of the world's population attributable to cardiovascular disease HIV infection increased from 0.36% to 0.92% and the number of life-years corrected for disability rose from 0.74 to 2.57 million.

More than 35 million people are infected with HIV worldwide. now more likely to die from chronic diseases like cancer or cardiovascular disease because life-saving drugs may contain the virus.

National estimates of prevalence and cardiovascular burden were available for 154 countries. The most population-attributable fraction was observed in countries of sub-Saharan Africa, with HIV accounting for more than 15% of the cardiovascular burden in Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa

. The researchers said:

Dr. Anoop Shah, a professor of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, said that this study had important implications for planning cardiovascular prevention policies in the United States. Low-resource countries where The Deputy Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, Professor Jeremy Pearson, said, "We now have clear evidence that your risk of heart and circulatory disease is doubled if you have HIV.

"The effects of one disease on another are often misunderstood," he added. "But with the aging of the population, the number of people living with more of an illness will continue to increase." It is essential that we develop our understanding of the interaction between conditions so that we can give patients the best treatments and advice "he added.