People with HIV over the age of 50 are more likely to have developed type 2 diabetes if they started antiretroviral treatment before 1999 or had a longer exposure to older antiretroviral drugs such as stavudine (d4T) or first-generation protease inhibitors such as nelfinavir or indinavir, according to a study of people receiving HIV care in British Columbia, Canada.
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o investigate this question researchers at the St Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver, the University of British Columbia and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS analysed the incidence of type 2 diabetes in people living with HIV who started treatment at St Paul’s Hospital up until July 31 2015. The cohort was predominantly male (89%) and white (83%) with a high prevalence of hepatitis C co-infection (43%) and AIDS-defining illness during the follow-up period (31%).
Patients were classified as having developed type 2 diabetes if at any time they had a blood sugar measurement above 11.1 mmol/L, or HbA1C > 6.5%, or had been prescribed antidiabetic medication or been recorded as diagnosed with diabetes.
Out of 1065 people who were aged 50 or over in July 2015, 235 people developed diabetes during an average of 13 years of follow-up. This represents an incidence rate of 1.61 new cases per 100 person-years of follow-up, 39% higher than the observed rate in the Canadian general population.