Metabolic and immune activation effects of treatment interruption in chronic HIV-1 infection: implications for cardiovascular risk.

Background: Concern about costs and antiretroviral therapy (ART)-associated toxicities led to the consideration of CD4 driven strategies for the management of HIV. That approach was evaluated in the SMART trial that reported an unexpected increase of cardiovascular events after treatment interruption (TI). Our goal was to evaluate fasting metabolic changes associated with interruption of antiretroviral therapy and relate them to changes of immune activation markers and cardiovascular risk.