Common HIV Therapies and the Heart

In AIDS patients with Kaposi’s sarcoma, reversible cardiac dysfunction was associat­ed with prolonged, high-dose therapy with interferon alpha [20]. Doxorubicin (Adri- amycin) used to treat AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has a dose-related effect on dilated cardiomyopa­thy, as does foscarnet sodium used to treat cytomegalovirus esophagitis [20]. Cardiac arrhythmias have been described with the administration of amphotericin B [50], gan­ciclovir [51], trimethoprim-sulfamethoxa- zole [52], and pentamidine [14]. The princi­pal cardiovascular actions/interactions of common HIV therapies are reported in Table 2.