Can one find elevated blood glucose level in hiv patients?
ANSWER: Hi, Actually, there are several researches related with this question. According to some of them, a part of the patients who are HIV positive, can develop diabetes in the near future. As you may probably know, when some one has diabetes he might have elevated blood sugar level, especially if he doesn’t take his pills. With regards to developing diabetes after HIV infections, the main cause is the virus. In general, when someone has virus infection, the whole organism mobilizes to fight it. Furthermore, it utilizes specific immune cells that produce the right antibodies in order to destroy the virus or bacteria. It remains still unexplained the fact that some viruses can turn the activity of the antibodies against the organism itself. Consequently, these antibodies try to destroy the nearest tissues, which have receptors for them. Sometimes, the target tissue can be the pancreas or more specifically, the beta cells, responsible for the production of insulin. When these antibodies destroy a big part of the beta cells, the production of the insulin is going to be decreased, and then, the HIV patient might have high blood glucose level. This is the probable, acceptable mechanism, which may explain the affect of the HIV virus on the diabetes onset. At the end, HIV remains still a complicated and difficult to treat condition. Dr.Alba |