AIDS Weekly (09.15.03) - Wednesday, November 12, 2003

"Cardiac dysfunction in AIDS is an important problem," while "cocaine is an epidemic associated with sudden death, cardiac dysfunction, and congestive heart failure," US scientists explained. "Cocaine use and HIV frequently coexist in the same patient, yet the combined impact of both is poorly understood."

R.L. Sutliff and colleagues at Emory University used "cocaine treatment of an established murine AIDS transgenic model (NL4- 3Delta gag/pol; TG) to define the combined effects of AIDS and cocaine on cardiac pathophysiology."

"To determine the effects of cocaine and HIV-1 proteins on mortality, wild-type and NL4-3 Delta gag/pol mice received saline or cocaine via continuous infusion by Alzet osmotic pumps for 28 days (chronic)," they wrote. "Acute cocaine administration (10 days; 40 mg/kg/day) was used to study the nonlethal effects of cocaine in TGs. Echocardiograms and single time point electrocardiograms were performed at the termination of each experiment," and "hearts were removed and examined histopathologically."

"Chronic cocaine treatment (80 mg/kg/day; 28 days) markedly decreased median survival in both wild-type and TG; however, TG survival was significantly more decreased," the report showed. "In acute studies, TG echocardiographic changes included increased left ventricular mass and increased left ventricular fractional shortening compared with all cohorts."

"Electrocardiographic changes were absent among the groups," the scientists wrote. "Histopathologically, perivascular fibrosis and interstitial fibrosis were evident in cocaine- treated TG."

"Data suggest that additive cardiac insults (from AIDS and cocaine) result in combined deleterious effects," the researchers concluded.

The study, "Cocaine Increases Mortality and Cardiac Mass in a Murine Transgenic Model of Acquire Immune Deficiency Syndrome," appeared in Laboratory Investigation (2003;83(7):983-989).
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