Inflaming Hearts

HIV affects around 34 million people worldwide. As a result of decades of research, it's now no longer an untreatable disease but one that can be successfully managed. However, patients with HIV are more prone to illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Researchers have conducted extensive studies into why patients who have HIV have a higher risk of CVD, although there's still no great understanding of the underlying reasons. Recent studies have shown that in men with HIV, inflammation plays a pivotal role in the higher risk of CVD, which is detected using a CT scan (pictured). Increased amounts of biological markers (biomarkers) of inflammation, which corresponded to an increase in coronary artery disease, were seen compared with people who don’t have HIV. Further research is needed to pinpoint the causes of this inflammation, and allow doctors to better manage the health of patients with HIV.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image courtesy of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
• Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Image copyright held by the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
• Research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, June 2016