Conditions: HIV Lipodystrophy
Keywords: HIV lipodystrophy Leptin Fat wasting Pioglitazone Insulin resistance
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 9
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to determine whether patients with HIV lipodystrophy (fat wasting) benefit from taking the combination of two drugs, one insulin sensitizer (either metformin or pioglitazone, both diabetes drugs) and leptin (a natural hormone produced by your fat cells). Our hope is that they will improve sugar and fat metabolism and positively affect the body fat changes you have noticed while taking HAART.

Detailed description:
Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) induces profound and sustained suppression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) replication, and is thus very effective in reducing disease-associated morbidity and mortality in this patient population. However, HAART also results in the development of a lipodystrophic syndrome which is characterized by fat accumulation, fat wasting, or a combination of both, and similar to congenital forms of lipodystrophy, is associated with components of the metabolic syndrome, including insulin resistance (IR), fasting hypertriglyceridemia, and hypercholesterolemia.

Our study is a "proof of concept" study on the treatment of the HAART-induced metabolic syndrome, which builds upon and represents a direct extension of a study previously funded by the American Diabetes Association (ADA). If our clinical trial proves that a combination treatment of leptin and an insulin sensitizer has additive or synergistic effects in reversing the metabolic abnormalities of HIV positive patients with lipoatrophy, it could lead to the design of larger multi-center, randomized, placebo-controlled trial(s) aiming at establishing safety and efficacy of this treatment for the HAART-induced metabolic syndrome.

Arms:
arm 1: Leptin replacement therapy arm 2: Diabetes treatment therapy

Interventions: intervention 1: Leptin intervention 2: Pioglitazone or metformin intervention 3: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None intervention 3: None

Protocol document: