January 2003
Hair
by Tom Beer
Are you absorbing enough of your HIV combo? Check your hair, say Swiss docs, who were shocked that their study of 89 HIVers found that hair samples bested blood tests for gauging how well folks’ systems were sucking up meds. That’s news you can use, according to UCSF’s Monica Gandhi, MD, as the art of HIV meds increasingly becomes “all about dose adjustment. Too much drug is toxic, but not enough leads to failure.” But while the Brits routinely use drug-level monitoring, here in the U.S. it’s as rare as a natural blonde.
