December 13, 2000


Insulin may help AIDS patients gain weight

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Insulin treatment may help AIDS patients to gain weight and feel better about themselves, according to researchers who looked at the treatment in one 47-year-old patient.
The man had dropped 20 pounds and experienced increasing fatigue, weakness and an inability to eat. This continued even though he was treated with antiviral drugs, and given injections of vitamin B12 and testosterone.

The patient's body weight increased from 132 pounds to 140 pounds in the first 3 months of being treated with daily injections of insulin, and at 6 months he weighed 147 pounds, according Dr. Udaya M. Kabadi, from the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, and colleagues from the VA Medical Center in Phoenix.

The man's CD4 cell counts rose while on insulin therapy and dropped after the injections stopped. The man also began to lose weight once again after stopping insulin, according to the report published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs.

"The patient requested going back on insulin because he felt so much better," Kabadi told Reuters Health. Again, the result was marked improvement in the patient's weight gain, white blood cell and CD4 counts after 3 months of insulin therapy. The patient reported no negative side effects from the insulin treatments.

There is "no better anabolic agent than insulin" to induce hunger and weight gain, Kabadi told Reuters Health. "Insulin administration in conjunction with antiretroviral therapy should be further evaluated as an anabolic therapeutic in HIV/AIDS," the researchers conclude.