For women, living with HIV is associated with a higher prevalence of various other chronic health conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, lung disease and cardiovascular disease, Healio reports.

In a letter to the editor published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Morgan Birabaharan, MD, of the department of infectious diseases and global public health at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues describe their findings after comparing rates of chronic health conditions among women based on their HIV status.

The investigators analyzed data from a large electronic medical records system that included patients of multiple health systems and represented 15% of the U.S. population. They assembled a study cohort of 10,590 HIV-positive women and 14.6 million HIV-negative women (the control group) who were active in the database between April 2015 and April 2020.

Sixty-three percent of the HIV-positive women were Black, and 89% were younger than 65. Among the HIV-negative women, 77% were white, 14% were Black and 71% were younger than 65.

HIV-positive women had a higher prevalence of various chronic health conditions compared with HIV-negative women: high blood pressure (49% versus 31%), diabetes (22% versus 12%), cardiovascular disease (13% versus 7%) and lung disease (36% versus 17%). All these conditions were more common among the HIV-positive women regardless of the age group.

After adjusting the data to account for age and race, the investigators found that having HIV was associated with a respective 1.37-fold, 1.48-fold, 2.05-fold and 2.06-fold greater likelihood of having high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and lung disease.

The study also found that women with HIV are developing these chronic diseases at younger ages than women who don’t have the virus.

 

To read the Healio article, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.