Drug Reactions and Metabolomic Profiles in HIV Patients on Treatment

Studying antiretroviral drugs related long-term adverse drug reactions and underlying metabolomic profiles in HIV-infected patients from both resource-poor and resource-rich medical settings has potential to contribute immensely to the new innovative field of personalized medicine. For example this work reports how commonly reported adverse drug reactions including polyneuropathy and lipodystrophy accounted for most of the drug changes in Kenyan sex workers. Further it was demonstrated that many plasma metabolites undergo significant alterations in HIV-infected patients before and after long-term exposure to ART. The current results may serve as a starting point for the search of new biomolecules that could be potential biomarkers for early detection of adverse drug reactions.