Are some medications associated with higher risk of increased lipids than others?
It’s become increasingly clear in the past one to two years that specific drugs, rather than specific classes of medications, are associated with an increased cholesterol. In other words, among the protease inhibitors, some drugs cause more problems with lipids or more problems with insulin resistance than others. Also looking at the nucleoside analogs, which are the older drugs, there’s a relatively recent study that shows some members of that class may cause more of a worsening of lipids compared to others. We weren’t able to look very closely at specific drugs, but I think as new drugs become available, there’s going to be increasing focus on individual drugs and their side effects. I think it is important that we look at individual drugs so we can pick and choose drugs at an individual level. For example, if someone’s at high risk for heart disease, we certainly might avoid certain drugs. Looking at specific drugs is not easy, however, because these drugs are always used in combina
