Human Immunodeficiency Virus–Associated Lipoatrophy: Letting the Genome Out of the Bottle

issue of the journal, Hulgan et al. [1] shed light on the potential role that genetic polymorphisms may play in predisposing HIV-infected patients receiving HAART to lipoatrophy. Since lipodystrophy was first described in 1998 [2], a number of studies have been published implicating antiretroviral therapy as its sole cause [3-6]. Initially, both fat atrophy and fat hyperplasia were thought to be manifestations of a single syndrome because they shared some common features. Subsequently, researchers found that although some antiretroviral agents were associated with eac clinical syndrome, drugs in all classes were associated o some degree with lipoatrophy, and some protease inhibitors were associated with lipohypertrophy, suggesting that these clinical manifestations might be different, but related, syndromes.