Obesity during HIV treatment: Causes
Obesity used to be a significant factor for people living with HIV. The virus reduces your appetite. Unfortunately, it also causes illness, and your body will consume more calories to fight off. Before effective treatment
Obesity during HIV treatment: Causes
Obesity used to be a significant factor for people living with HIV. The virus reduces your appetite. Unfortunately, it also causes illness, and your body will consume more calories to fight off. Before effective treatment, some people with HIV become terminally ill, losing more than 10 percent of their body weight and becoming frail.
Today’s antiretroviral therapy (ART) prevents weight loss and helps you live longer and healthier lives with HIV. But these medications can cause different problems with weight gain. They can make you overweight, sometimes overweight.
Why does obesity have a problem?
If you are not overweight at the start of treatment, gaining a few pounds is not bad. Being overweight gives your body the strength to fight HIV and other diseases. Doctors call this weight “recovery health”.
But now, the balance has fallen in another direction. People living with HIV in the United States are more likely to be overweight than those without the virus. Being overweight can lead to health problems such as diabetes and heart disease. If you have HIV, you are already at risk of contracting these diseases.
Weight gain is an essential factor to consider when choosing a doctor for HIV, especially if you are overweight, to begin with. You can switch to a less-effective medication for obesity. Diet and exercise can help you stay healthy and avoid the problem of obesity.
Why do HIV drugs cause weight gain?
Obesity is a common side effect of antiretroviral therapy (ART). On average, people gained about 30 pounds [4 kg] during the first two years of treatment. This is because most of the profits are made in the first year.
About 1 in 5 people are incredibly healthy when diagnosed with HIV infection over three years of taking these drugs.
Scientists do not know why HIV drugs cause obesity. One reason is that they work. When you have HIV, your body is constantly burning to fight infection. ART prevents you from getting infected.
HIV treatment also helps to reduce your cravings. It also helps your body absorb more nutrients from the food you eat.
Your lifestyle also affects your weight. For example, a diet high in calories and fat and a little exercise can make you gain weight during your treatment. So what antiretroviral drugs do cause weight gain?
Some antiretroviral drugs often cause weight gain more than others. Older drugs such as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI) and non-transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) are not associated with weight gain.
These medications include:
Abacavir (Ziagen)
Doravirine (Pifeltro)
Efavirenz (Sustiva)
Emtricitabine (Emtriva)
Etravirine (Intelence)
Lamivudine (Epivir)
Nevirapine (Viramune, Viramune XR)
Rilpivirine (Edurant)
Zidovudine (Retrovir)
It is one of the medicines of Biktarvy combination therapy. Antibodies to protease such as atazanavir (Reyataz), darunavir (Prezista), and tipranavir (Aptivus) can cause weight gain.
A new set of anti-HIV drugs called integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs) can cause weight gain. These medications include:
Cabotegravir (Vocabria)
Dolutegravir (Tivicay)
Raltegravir (Isentress, Isentress HD)
The weight you get during treatment depends on the medication you are taking. But Retrovir users gained less than 1 pound at the same time.
For more information, visit Sarwarpro.com
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