Viremia Does Not Independently Predict Cardiovascular Disease in People With HIV: A RESPOND Cohort Study

Background
HIV viremia has been considered a cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor, but many studies have had insufficient data on potential confounders. We explored the association between viremia and CVD after adjusting for established risk factors and analyzed whether consideration of viremia would improve CVD prediction.

Methods
Adults from RESPOND were followed from the first date with available data until the first of rigorously defined CVD, loss to follow-up, death, or administrative censoring. We first analyzed the associations between 6 measures of viremia (time-updated, before antiretroviral therapy [ART], viremia category, and measures of cumulative viremia) and CVD after adjusting for the variables in the D:A:D CVD score (age, sex/gender, smoking, family history, diabetes, recent abacavir, CD4 count, blood pressure, cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein, cumulative use of stavudine, didanosine, indinavir, lopinavir, and darunavir). We subsequently compared predictive performance with and without viremia in 5-fold internal cross-validation.

Results
A total of 547 events were observed in 17 497 persons (median follow-up, 6.8 years). Although some viremia variables were associated with CVD in univariable analyses, there were no statistically significant associations after adjusting for potential confounders, neither for measures of current viral load, pre-ART viral load, highest viremia category during ART, nor cumulative viremia (modeled both as total cumulative viremia, cumulative viremia during ART, and recent cumulative viremia). Consistently, none of the viremia variables improved prediction capacity.

Conclusions
In this large international cohort, HIV viremia was not associated with CVD when adjusting for established risk factors. Our results did not show viremia to be predictive of CVD among people with HIV.