The introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (also known as combination therapy) has transformed the nature of HIV infection from a severe and ultimately fatal disease to that of a manageable chronic condition. HIV drugs are highly efficacious, but their use comes at the cost of a range of drug-related adverse events, including severe drug hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs) that have...

OBJECTIVES To study the correlation between the HLA-B*5701 allele and the single nucleotide polymorphism in HCP5 (rs2395029). PATIENTS AND METHODS All HIV patients naive for abacavir seen at our institution between September 2007 and December 2008 were prospectively screened for HLA-B*5701. HCP5 rs2395029 genotyping was carried out by allelic discrimination using the TaqMan 5'-nuclease assay....

In general, the risk of complications such as heart attack, stroke and poor blood circulation increases as people age. Among HIV-positive people, the risk of these complications is heightened compared to HIV-negative people because of the long-term effects of HIV infection. Chronic viral infections can cause inflammation, and ongoing inflammation can affect the health of many organ-systems, inc...

Immunologically mediated drug reactions have been traditionally classified as unpredictable based on the fact that they cannot be predicted strictly on the pharmacological action of the drug. Such adverse drug reactions are associated with considerable morbidity and include severe cutaneous adverse reactions such as Stevens-Johnson syndrome/toxic epidermal necrolysis and the drug hypersensitivi...

Long-term studies of modern ART are needed to assess the safety of these medicines in co-infected people. To determine the potential impact of ART on the rate of progress of liver injury, researchers with the Canadian Coinfection Cohort (CCC) study analysed health-related information from more than 300 participants collected in their database. The researchers found that some ART regimens contai...