Parâmetros de avaliação nutricional para detectar desnutrição em pacientes com AIDS em tratamento com antirretrovirais

Abstract

The assessment of nutritional status in patients with HIV is of great importance, because the consequences caused by the pathological process of the disease are associated with weight loss, lean body mass and severe malnutrition, which predicts increased morbidity and mortality. The values of CD4 linfometria have also been used as predictors of short and medium term development of opportunistic infections, which are uncommon in patients with CD4 counts > 200 cells/mm3. Based on this knowledge, we chose to study the nutritional status of HIV positive men and women according to CD4 cell count. Participants had the following nutritional parameters assessed: body mass index (BMI), corrected arm muscle area (AMA), serum albumin and the phase angle (PA). We studied 39 HIV-positive patients, under treatment in a infectious diseases clinic of the University Hospital Pedro Ernesto (HUPE). None of patients has malnutrition according BMI and albumin in both sexes, regardless of the number of CD4 cells. However, in men and women to AMA and the PA, have demonstrated reductions in parameters of lean body mass. Regarding the association between nutritional indicators and the number of CD4 cells, we observed a significant correlation with the AMA and albumin in the study group. The correlation according to gender remained significant in both groups for AMA and a positive trend (p = 0.06) between the PA and CD4 in males. Therefore these results demonstrate that to assess nutritional status, especially the compartiment of lean body mass in HIV positive patients under antirretrovirals, it is necessary to use more sensitive, even in patients with the best state of disease control.