High Prevalence of Lipid Abnormalities among Antiretroviral-Naive HIV-Infected Asian Children with Mild-To-Moderate Immunosuppression

Background Dyslipidaemia is a common complication among HIV-infected children after antiretroviral therapy (ART); however, HIV itself can cause abnormal lipid metabolism. There is limited information of lipid profiles among Asian HIV-infected children naive to ART.Methods A total of 274 HIV-infected ART-naive Thai and Cambodian children aged 1-12 years with CD4% between 15% and 24% were included. Patients were fasted for =4 h before blood was drawn. Abnormal lipid levels were defined as triglyceride (TG)>130 mg/dl, total cholesterol (TC)>200 mg/dl, low-density lipoprotein (LDL)>130 mg/dl and high-density lipoprotein (HDL)=40 mg/dl.Results The mean (±sd) was 76.6 (33.8) months for age and -1.3 (1.0) for weight Z-score. Mean (±sd) CD4% was 19.9 (4.8) % and HIV RNA was 4.6 (0.6) log10 copies/ml. The median (±sd) fasting time was 13.0 (2.7) h. Mean (±sd) for lipids were 116 (62) mg/dl for TG, 139 (29) mg/dl for TC, 73 (29) mg/dl for LDL and 45 (19) mg/dl for HDL. Overall 63.9% had dyslipidaemia with hypertriglyceridaemia and hypo-HDL being the most common (28% and 45%, respectively), while 2% had hypercholesterolaemia or hyper-LDL. After adjusting for age, having HIV RNA>5 log10copies/ml was associated with hypo-HDL with ORs of 8.1 (95% CI 2.7–24.3).Conclusions Up to two-thirds of ART-naive, HIV-infected Asian children with mild-to-moderate immune suppression had dyslipidaemia. Low HDL was the most common and was associated with high HIV viraemia. The long-term consequence of low HDL deserves further investigation in children.