Smoking behavior of HIV-infected patients

Till Neumann, Nico Reinsch, Stefan Esser, Peter Krings, Thomas Konorza, Tanja Woiwoid, Michael Miller, Norbert Brockmeyer, Raimund Erbel

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DOI: 10.4236/health.2010.28135                

Abstract

Recent reports describe an increased rate of cardiovascular events in smoking HIV-infected subjects. However, a lot is still unknown about smoking in this patient population. The purpose of the study was to analyze smoking behavior in HIV-infected subjects as a risk factor of coro-nary atherosclerosis and determine its effect on the probability of coronary events. We analyzed the cardiovascular risk factors of 294 HIV-infected adults (age: 42.1 ? 10.1 years; 77% males). An elevated tobacco abuse was observed in 63.6% of the HIV-infected patients. Tobacco use was much more common in HIV-infected males than in females (67.8% vs. 49.2%; p < 0.01). Even elderly HIV-infected subjects had elevated rates of pack-years, the daily tobacco consumption does not seem to change at different ages (p > 0.2). Analysing the way of infection and the status of smoking, patients with HIV-infection acquired by heterosexual contact exhibited sig-nificantly lower rates of smoking compared with patients with HIV-infection acquired by MSM (man having sex with man) or by intravenous drug abuse (52.7% vs. 67.4%/82.1%, p < 0.01). The effect of smoking on the 10yrs. probability of coronary events determined by Framingham- equation was superior compared with all other classic cardiovascular risk factors. HIV-infected patients exhibited an increased tobacco use. Knowledge about smoking behavior in this pa-tient population is essential to evaluate the risk of cardiovascular events and to implicate prevention strategies for HIV-infected subjects.

Keywords

Human Immunodeficiency Virus; Atherosclerosis; Smoking; Tobacco Consumption

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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