Comparing Life’s Simple Seven between newly diagnosed, ART-naive people living with HIV and HIV-uninfected adults in Tanzania: clues for cardiovascular disease prevention

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) represents a major cause of premature mortality in people living with HIV (PLWH). There is a need to characterize the cardiovascular health profiles of PLWH to appropriately guide primary prevention efforts, particularly in settings like Sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a high burden of HIV and limited resources. A cross-sectional analysis was conducted on a cohort of newly diagnosed PLWH and HIV-uninfected adults recruited from three HIV clinics in Mwanza, Tanzania. Modified Life’s Simple 7 definitions were applied to the cohort to compare cardiovascular health profiles between the two study groups using Poisson regressions. Pooled cohort equation (PCE) scores were also calculated to compare the distribution of CVD risk between the two groups. Our study included 995 study participants (492 PLWH, 503 HIV-uninfected). PLWH had a higher prevalence of ideal body mass index (75%), ideal blood pressure (56%), and ideal total cholesterol but a lower prevalence of ideal smoking (84%) and ideal physical activity (39%) than HIV-uninfected counterparts. PCE scores were low throughout the study population (76.5%), regardless of HIV status. Primary prevention of CVD in newly diagnosed people living with HIV in Africa may need to focus on smoking cessation and optimization of physical activity levels.