Wednesday, April 2, 2008
AIDS Drug Lifts Heart Attack Risk, Study Shows
This article was found in the New York Times and discusses the correlation of an AIDS drug with an increase in heart attack risk. Two AIDS drugs, Ziagen and Videx, both are very commonly used by many individuals with AIDS. However studies have shown that these two drugs could increase the risk of heart attacks by more than 50%. AIDS drugs are becoming more and more beneficial for patients with AIDS, and because of this the reward is worth the risk for many patients. As this new information gathered in this study is informed to doctors who treat AIDS, they must make sure to relay this information back to the patient. It is important for the doctor to be able to communicate well with the patient in order to explain some of the risks that may occur when taking these drugs.
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It's scary to read articles such as this one, knowing that those who have contracted HIV also have to worry about an increase in heart attack when taking certain drugs. However, the article did also mention that no such increase in risk of heart attack was found with a number of other AIDS medications. The article also showed how much greater the risk for heart attack was for patients taking the medications who already were at risk for heart attacks. Although the risk of heart attack is often genetic, it seems that patients could lower their risk of heart attack on these medications through healthy lifestyles. The article stated, "For those without known heart risks, the chances of a heart attack were low -- between 1 to 5 percent. Once they were on the drug, their risk ranged from 2 to nearly 7 percent", showing that heart attack rates did not increase that much for those not previously at risk. Therefore, I think this makes it even more important that the doctor patient relationship is well established and the doctor can communicate to the patient about not engaging in high risk behavior (such as smoking) when taking the AIDS drugs shown to increase heart attack rates.
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