Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - September 10, 2003
Fat protects: Women who are overweight experience slower HIV progression and have higher CD4 cell counts than women who are underweight, according to research published in the September 1 edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Investigators involved in the HIV Epidemiology Research study recruited 799 HIV-positive women to establish if there was an association between body mass index (BMI) and several clinically important HIV disease outcomes.
Investigators established that a higher baseline BMI was associated with a delay in the time taken for the CD4 cell count to fall below 200. Odds ratios also indicated that women with higher BMI were less likely to experience HIV-related events, "whether clinical, immunological or mortality related".
The odds of death in women who were underweight were 3,1 times greater than in obese women.
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