Study Finds Stroke Spikes Among HIV-Positive People

New medicines may be to blame, researchers say

21 January 2011

A new study of stroke in the United States has found that the rate of brain-damaging blood clots has increased dramatically among people infected with HIV. The increase in strokes coincides with the use of newer, more effective AIDS medicines.

Bruce Ovbiagele of the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues analyzed a database of medical records for the decade starting in 1997.

During that period, hospitalizations for stroke in the U.S. declined by seven percent. "But when you look in the HIV population," Ovbiagele said, "they actually increased almost about 60 percent across the decade. So stroke rates were going up among HIV-infected individuals while they were going down in the general population."

The scientist says the data used in this study is not sufficient to explain definitively why strokes increased in people with HIV. But he believes it's not a coincidence that the surge in strokes came just as HIV patients began using more powerful drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapies, or HAART medications.

"Now we know that HAART medications have metabolic complication, which include abnormal changes in cholesterol, unfavorable changes in cholesterol. We know that they can also cause increased deposition of fat within the body. And both these things are risk factors for stroke."