Mild brain impairment caused by HIV has become “a silent epidemic” that needs better screening tools and more research to effectively address it, said Dr. Victor Valcour, who presented on HIV and brain injury at a session on long-term complications of HIV and antiretroviral therapy at the 2010 International AIDS Conference.

“The rate of [brain] impairment in patients with HIV is much, much higher” than in the general population, said Dr. Valcour, a physician at the Memory and Aging Center…

People with HIV should be screened regularly for kidney disease because even slight kidney damage can lead to an increased risk of heart problems, according to a presentation at the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Mohamed Atta, an Associate Professor of Medicine in nephrology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and medical director of the Dialysis Center at DaVita Health Care in Baltimore, spoke about kidney complications and deferred versus early HIV treatment at a session…

Although the cause of increased heart problems in people with HIV remains unclear, both antiretroviral drugs and the virus itself appear to play an important role.

These are the conclusions of a presentation by Dr. Georg Behrens on heart disease in people with HIV, which was included in a session on side effects of antiretroviral therapy at the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Behrens, an assistant professor at Hanover Medical School in Germany who studies the metabolic…

A session on side effects of antiretroviral therapy at the 2010 International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria included a presentation on bone loss in people with HIV and its possible causes and risk factors. The presenter, Dr. Patrick Mallon, confirmed that people with HIV experience greater bone loss than people without HIV; however, he also argued that the link between bone loss and antiretroviral medications, weight, and vitamin D deficiency remains unclear.

Dr. Mallon, an infectious diseases specialist at Mater…

Several studies presented at the 2010 International AIDS Conference found that newer antiretrovirals, such as Isentress and Selzentry, are safe and effective at treating even multi-drug-resistant HIV.

However, one study that examined the efficacy of single versus double boosted protease inhibitors in adults with drug-resistant HIV found that double boosted protease inhibitors offered no additional benefits over single boosted.

Although antiretroviral therapy is usually highly successful at treating HIV, drug-resistant forms of the virus have emerged over time. Studies have…