抄録
Subjects: We examined the serum haptoglobin (Hp) levels in 52 HIV-1 infected patients at our hospital. Fifteen of them were hemophilic, and 37 of them had been infected by sexual contact.
Results: Twenty-two of the 52 cases (42.3%) demonstrated a lower Hp level than normal. Furthermore, the Hp level in 14 cases (26.9%) had decreased to levels lower than the measurement sensitivity. Only one of the patients, whose Hp values were less than normal, showed a weakly positive finding for Coombs direct test. We recognized neither an overt decrease of hemoglobin nor an overt increase in the number of reticulocytes in the patients whose Hp values showed less than normal values. We therefore concluded that hemolytic anemia including autoimmune hemolytic anemia was not related to a decrease in the Hp levels. We found a significant decrease with Hp levels in patients who were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART). We also found a significant decrease in the Hp levels during ART even in patients with an HIV-1 infection and without hemophilia or hepatitis C. We measured the Hp levels before and during ART in 6 cases, and thus recognized a significant reduction in the Hp levels during ART. IL-4, which can affect Hp production, was not found to be related with the observed decrease in the Hp levels.
Conclusion: We concluded that ART induced the decrease of Hp. The cause of the decrease in the Hp level by ART is unknown, but it might promote arteriosclerosis by lipodystrophy because of breakdown in the Hp's defense mechanism for the vascular disorder.
