http://www.poz.com/articles/401_11794.shtml
How should these findings be interpreted? Donald Kotler, MD, of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, a longtime researcher of lipid-related problems in HIV-positive patients, cautions that the seemingly high risk percentages are not necessarily what they appear to be.To be as blunt as possible, to fugue on a theme of "Is there anything lacking," the phrase I tell myself usually goes something like this: "Without these meds, you'd most likely be dead by now."
“If the risk starts out low,” he says, “an extra 16% is not high. Even a doubling is not high. For example, if you are a young African-American woman, the risk of having a heart attack is on the order of 0.1% per year. According to DAD, this rises to 0.116% a year.”
Dr. Stein writes, “The increased cardiovascular risk observed with protease inhibitors is not high, especially as compared with the effect of other cardiovascular risk factors”—specifically, aging, being male, being a current smoker or having a history of heart disease.
It makes a whole lot of other worries go right in the dustbin.
2 comments:
Life will find a way to kill you, one way or another.
when my husband was diagnosed with HCV, i read about all of the treatments, the prognosis, what could be expected down the road. it was all grim news and the drugs for tx scared me, especially with so little chance of response.
he took the drugs, they nearly killed him, he was very, very sick for a couple of years and today he is virus free.
i know you can't be virus free, but i think your attitude is the only reasonable one to have. yes, there may be side effects and yes, it's a drag and yes, it sucks and yes, you'd be dead otherwise.
that last one eliminates all options in my view. i'm a big fan of living and figure that life at most any cost is worth it.
i didn't realize the drugs were causing heart problems until i watched "The Gift."
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