Different nutritional-state indicators of HIV-positive individuals undergoing antiretroviral therapy

ABSTRACT

This study aimed at learning about the nutritional profile of HIV-positive individuals undergoing antiretroviral therapy and at comparing the performance of nutritional-state indicators. A transversal study was performed on 94 patients attending the Tropical Diseases Outpatient Hospital of Botucatu Medical School (FMB) - UNESP. The body mass index (BMI) and the classification by Papini-Berto (PB) were used to evaluate nutritional state, aiming at detecting malnutrition and obesity. The waist-to-hips ratio (W/HR) and waist circumference (WC) were adopted for identification of abdominal obesity and lipodystrophy. According to BMI, most of the individuals were eutrophic, followed by 30.9 percent overweight and 6.4 percent malnourished. By using the PB classification, the frequency of malnourished increased (22.3 percent). The analysis of the PB classification in relation to BMI indicated that the former presented high sensitivity and good specificity for malnutrition diagnosis, namely 100 percent and 83 percent, respectively. The prevalence of abdominal obesity was 7.44 percent according to WC, and a higher prevalence (38.3 percent) was observed when taking W/HR into account. There was significant positive association between nutritional diagnosis according to PB and T CD4+ lymphocyte. The results support the use of PB classification for malnutrition detection as well as that of BMI and W/HR for overweight and fat redistribution.