Abdominal fat can pose heart-related risk in people with HIV

In the mid-1990s, clinicians treating people with HIV began to notice a syndrome characterized by loss of limb fat, facial wasting and accumulation of abdominal fat in individuals on early combination antiretroviral therapy regimens.

Initially known as lipohypertrophy, the phenomenon eventually assumed the broader definition of clinically apparent lipodystrophy, which, at its height, affected roughly half of people with HIV (PWH) on combination antiretroviral therapy (ART). With the incorporation of thymidine analogs and first-generation protease inhibitors into early combination ART regimens, clinicians increasingly recognized the metabolic consequences of the lipodystrophy phenotype: high rates of insulin resistance, dyslipidemias and elevated risk for diabetes and cardiovascularevent