Dr. Matthew Freiberg had the privilege of speaking at the International Aids Society (IAS) Conference in Vancouver in July of 2015. For those who were unable to attend the event, you can still learn about his participation in the conference right here.
Dr. Freiberg was interviewed about how we should consider cardiovascular disease in the context of HIV.
Dr. Freiberg also spoke in a session about co-morbidities and HIV. The presentation was titled "Cardiovacular Disease in HIV: A Global Challenge." Read a summary below.
We know there is a higher risk for myocardial infarction, heart failure and stroke in HIV. But HIV is not the only risk factor fo CVD (cardiovascular disease); all the other factors such as diabetes, smoking etc drive the risk as well. So we have biological and environmental factors which are increased in aging. If we look at all the causes of death in HIV the non transmissible factors are highly important, especially in Western world bout they are becoming more and more important also in Sub Saharan Africa. And we need more data about these factors in this context. Other individual factors such asa race can also have high impact: mortality among women is highly different between white or black women, there can be a ten fold difference! Another analysis shows that few people living with HIV with CVD risk factors are prescribed aspirin and even less take it actually. We also take into consideration that polipharmacy could interact with HIV treatment. Do we need guidelines to treat CVD in people with HIV? Probably yes, but we also must focus on prevention do to have more research on this, including implementation science.
