Curly Hair and Lipodystrophy as a Result of Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment?

Worldwide diversity of hair curliness: a new method of assessment

“…This very simple method, whose robustness has been proven, can be an additional tool to assess of natural curliness, but also to follow the related alteration of hair curliness disease 7,8 or medicine 9–12 …”

Stem cell apoptosis in HIV‐1 alopecia

“…The proposed pathologic mechanism for indinavir‐induced alopecia is an alteration of the hair cycle induced by a disturbance on the retinoid metabolism, leading to a reversible loss of telogenic hairs 18 . Retinoid‐like side effects as cheilitis, dry skin, paronychia, lipodystrophy, and alopecia are expected in indinavir‐treated patients because of the homologies between amino acids sequences of retinoic acid‐binding protein 1 (RABP‐1) and the catalytic site of HIV‐1 protease, the target of protease inhibitors 18–20 . However, indinavir‐induced alopecia has no relation with other retinoid‐like mucocutaneous manifestations, drug dosage, or CD4 cell counts, suggesting the possibility that this interference with the retinoid metabolism may not be sole pathogenic mechanism of this drug‐induced alopecia 21 .…”

Cutaneous effects of highly active antiretroviral therapy in HIV-infected patients

“…The predominant cutaneous findings of indinavir therapy are retinoid‐like effects; lipodystrophy occurs in a smaller proportion of patients on indinavir. The retinoid‐like manifestations of recurrent paronychia (47), pyogenic granulomas (48), curly hair (49), and alopecia (50,51) can occur with indinavir. Indinavir‐related alopecia may be diffuse or patchy.…”