Different nutritional-state indicators of HIV-positive individuals undergoing antiretroviral therapy

this study aimed at learning about the nutritional profile of hiv-positive individuals undergoing antiretroviral therapy and at comparing the performance of nutritional-state indicators. a transversal study was performed on 94 patients attending the tropical diseases outpatient hospital of botucatu medical school (fmb) - unesp. the body mass index (bmi) and the classification by papini-berto (pb) were used to evaluate nutritional state, aiming at detecting malnutrition and obesity. the waist-to-hips ratio (w/hr) and waist circumference (wc) were adopted for identification of abdominal obesity and lipodystrophy. according to bmi, most of the individuals were eutrophic, followed by 30.9% overweight and 6.4% malnourished. by using the pb classification, the frequency of malnourished increased (22.3%). the analysis of the pb classification in relation to bmi indicated that the former presented high sensitivity and good specificity for malnutrition diagnosis, namely 100% and 83%, respectively. the prevalence of abdominal obesity was 7.44% according to wc, and a higher prevalence (38.3%) was observed when taking w/hr into account. there was significant positive association between nutritional diagnosis according to pb and t cd4+ lymphocyte. the results support the use of pb classification for malnutrition detection as well as that of bmi and w/hr for overweight and fat redistribution.