Assessment of Antioxidant Enzymes and Cortisol Levels among HIV Patients on HAART

The chronic oxidative stress that HIV patients go through brought the need for assessment of the antioxidant levels into focus as an adjunct to the standard regiment of treating HIV patients. This study was on 116 HIV patients, of which 60 were receiving antiretroviral therapy and 56 were apparently healthy and age-matched individuals as control subjects. The bio-data and medical history of the subjects were obtained using questionnaire. These included duration of HIV infection and duration of antiretroviral treatment. The subjects that participated in this research gave their informed consent, did not have tuberculosis, diabetes or severe malaria, those with any of these conditions were excluded from the research. Female subjects who were pregnant were also excluded from the study. The subjects were within 20-70 years of age, and have had HIV for at least one year for the test group, while the control were HIV negative. Five millilitres of blood was collected from each subject after overnight fast, for the assay of glutathione peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, cortisol, and CD4. The result revealed that the mean values of GPX and SOD levels of HIV positive patients on HAART were significantly lower than the control (p=0.0001). The mean cortisol levels of HIV patients on HAART were significantly higher than the control (p=0.0001). Similar trend was observed in male and female categories. Based on the results, it is indicative that HIV patients are constantly under oxidative stress, HIV drug therapy and increased cortisol levels have negative effects on the immune status of HIV patients. The need to incorporate antioxidant in treatment regiment is advocated.