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People With HIV Must Also Battle Obesity

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By ALICIA CHANG, The Associated Press

Published: October 4, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Early in the AIDS epidemic, people infected with the virus often lost a dangerous amount of weight, at times looking gaunt and ghostly.

Today, they are facing the opposite problem. Many who have HIV, but not AIDS, are struggling with obesity, which has overtaken 'wasting syndrome' as the top concern.
AIDS researchers and advocacy groups say the waistlines of HIV patients are growing right along with the girths of uninfected Americans.

New research suggests that nearly two-thirds of the HIV population may be overweight or obese, mirroring the U.S. population.

Doctors say there's a growing need to screen people with the AIDS virus for obesity, which raises the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol problems.

'We used to worry that they would lose weight and become wasted,' said Nancy Crum-Cianflone of TriService AIDS Clinical Consortium in San Diego.

'Maybe we should redirect our concerns to making sure they are maintaining a healthy, normal weight,' she said.

Crum-Cianflone became interested in the problem after noticing her patients were steadily getting fat and decided to study how common obesity was in the HIV population.

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