Fish oil supplements, combined with the lipid-lowering drug fenofibrate (Tricor), reduced triglycerides to normal levels in a significant percentage of HIV-positive people who did not respond to either therapy alone, according to the results of an AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), made available online in advance of publication in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
John Gerber, MD, of the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, and his colleagues enrolled 100 HIV-positive people whose antiretroviral regimen had caused their triglyceride levels to increase above 200 mg/dL, which is the top limit of the healthy range. Elevated triglycerides can lead to pancreatitis and have been linked to a higher risk of heart disease.
For the first eight weeks of the study, the study volunteers took either 3 grams of fish oil twice daily or 160 mg of fenofibrate once daily. If their triglyceride levels were not below 200 mg/dL after nearly two months, patients in the study were given both treatments to use at the same time.
After the first eight weeks in the study, 8.5 percent of the fish oil-treated patients and 16.7 percent of the fenofibrate-treated patients had triglyceride levels within the normal range. Of the 75 people who went on to take both drugs, 22.7 percent saw their triglyceride levels drop below 200 mg/dL. This was statistically significant, meaning that it was too large of a difference to have happened by chance. The researchers state that these results are sufficiently promising to warrant further study of this combination.
