In this video, Steven Grinspoon, MD, talks about the overall take-home messages from his session Mechanisms and Treatments for Steatosis in HIV, including what's next for research on this topic.
Additional Resource:
- Grinspoon, SK. Mechanisms and treatments of steatosis in HIV. Presented at: Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections 2021; March 7-10, 2021. https://ww2.aievolution.com/cro2101/index.cfm?do=abs.viewAbs&abs=1032
- Stanley TL, Fourman LT, Feldpausch MN, et al. Effects of tesamorelin on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in HIV: a randomised, double-blind, multicentre trial [published online October 29, 2019]. Lancet HIV. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3018(19)30338-8
Steven K. Grinspoon, MD, is a professor of medicine and director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also the chief of the Metabolism Unit and the MGH Endowed Chair in Neuroendocrinology and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
TRANSCRIPT:
Dr Stephen Grinspoon: I'm Dr. Steven Grinspoon. I'm a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. I'm Chief of the Metabolism Unit at MGH, and I've had a long‑standing interest in the metabolic complications of HIV, including fatty liver disease.
We've learned a lot about the physiology of NAFLD in the unique physiology in HIV, and harnessing that physiology to develop treatment strategies is the most important message.
We can do it, we're on the path to do it. It's an important public health issue right now for HIV patients. It may become the leading cause of liver transplants in the future. We need to get on it. We understand more of the physiology, and we need to develop targeted treatment strategies to address it in the HIV population.
We need to include more HIV patients in these studies, as you alluded to. We need to learn even more about the mechanisms of NAFLD in HIV. We need to learn about the consequences of NAFLD in HIV. We need to understand how treatments for hepatitis can affect NAFLD, etc.
There's a number of unanswered questions in the HIV population. We need to learn what the optimal lifestyle is that could reduce or prevent NAFLD from developing in HIV. There's a number of different questions, but what's next is to harness what we do know to develop a potential therapeutic or set of therapeutics for that population.
I'd like to thank the audience who are watching this and for the people who participate in the symposium. Thank you so much.