What was the relationship of drug and alcohol use to diabetes risk?
Those are not very significant. We used AUDIT-C to look at the hazards of alcohol use. It seems that there may be some protective risk overall, but it’s not very clear how alcohol plays into the whole equation. But with illicit drug use, we did not find any significant association in the HIV-positive group. In the HIV-negative group there was a slight protective effect of illicit drug use. I think the odds ratio was about .67 in the HIV-negative group, and that was significant. What’s the take-home? The take-home is that the big driver of diabetes in the HIV-positive group is still the traditional risk factors, not HIV itself. HIV itself is a relatively minor contributor at this point in time. As these people gain weight, when they go on antiretroviral therapy and are well-suppressed, their risk of diabetes might increase after that. Thank you very much. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
