Title:Association of Low Vitamin D with Complications of HIV and AIDS: A literature Review
Volume: 20
Issue: 2
Author(s): Evelyn Chokuda, Chris Reynolds and Satyajit Das*
Affiliation:
- Department of HIV Medicine, Coventry & Warwickshire Partnership Trust, Coventry,United Kingdom
Keywords:
HIV, vitamin D, diabetes, fracture, cardiovascular disease, Hepatitis C, tuberculosis, cancer.
Abstract:
With the advent of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), the survival of HIV patients
has improved dramatically, but the complications of the disease and treatment have become
an important issue in the management of HIV patients. Vitamin-D deficiency is common in HIV
patients. Low vitamin-D is associated with different comorbidities in the HIV uninfected general
population.
In this review, we first briefly describe vitamin D synthesis and mechanism of action and we focus
on the epidemiological and clinical data dealing with the relationship between vitamin D deficiency
in HIV infection with several comorbidities which has been found to be increasingly common
in patients living with HIV infection. We searched the PubMed database using the keywords
“HIV,” “vitamin D” and other common disorders or conditions that are relatively common in HIV
infection. The other conditions included in the search were osteoporosis and fracture, cardiovascular
disease, diabetes and insulin resistance, active tuberculosis, hepatitis-C co-infection, and HIV
disease progression. Articles presenting original data as well as systematic reviews and met
analysis related to HIV population were included in our analysis.
Vitamin-D deficiency seems to be associated with several adverse outcomes in HIV patients but a
definite cause and effect relationship with vitamin-D is yet to be confirmed in most of the cases.
However, the literature supporting the efficacy of vitamin-D supplementation is lacking.