Nutritional aspects of HIV infection

Wasting may not be an inevitable consequence of HIV infection but may be a consequence of multiple nutritional insults that are additive without periods of replenishment in between. Protein energy malnutrition in AIDS patients may be consequential to underlying illness and concomitant to death as a result of that illness or may hasten a patient's demise, that is, starvation with fatal loss of body cell mass. Mortality is closely related to weight loss. Malnutrition may be a result of decreased intake, malabsorption, altered metabolism, or any combination of the three. Nutritional strategies to prevent PEM include appetite stimulation, early nutritional supplementation with oral supplements, and the diagnosis and treatment of malabsorption and underlying infections. More aggressive measures such as gastrostomy or jejunostomy tube placement and total parenteral feedings are still being evaluated. Nutritional supplementation to enhance the immune system or manipulate metabolism may be adjunctive to the above strategies. Early intervention and attention to nutritional status may have long-term benefits to patients with this disease.