NUTRITION AND AIDS: NEW TASK FORCE RECOMMENDATIONS

A task force of top AIDS physicians and dietitians has published recommendations for patients and for physicians on nutritional support for persons with AIDS or any HIV infection. Anyone can obtain free copies of a brochure for patients, and an article written for physicians; the article was also published in Nutrition, vol. 5 no. 1, January/February 1989.
Organizations can obtain bulk copies. (See below for information on how to order.)

The brochure includes specific recommendations for dealing with mouth pain or sores (which may make eating difficult, resulting in malnutrition), difficulty swallowing, diarrhea, anorexia (loss of appetite), and nausea or vomiting. It also discusses nutritional supplements, and the use of various forms of tube feeding if they become necessary. It includes basic precautions for avoiding bacterial infection from raw foods.

The physician's article gives much more detailed recommendations for optimizing the nutritional status of patients at any stage of illness. For example, it points out that some apparently "neurological" complications are actually caused by malnutrition and are reversible.

The recommendations focus on maintaining adequate intake and absorption of proteins, calories, and all other required nutrients. They do not cover the use of high doses of particular food components as possible therapies to treat specific conditions.

The task force also commissioned its own survey, which found that "although more than 90 percent of caregivers at the major AIDS treatment centers in the United States consider nutrition important, fewer than 20 percent of the institutions have a standard nutrition protocol for people with AIDS".

The eleven-member task force which prepared the recommendations includes Donald Kotler, M.D., gastroenterologist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York and a leading expert on gastrointestinal complications of AIDS; Donald Armstrong, M.D., chief of infectious diseases at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) AIDS Clinical Treatment Unit there, and member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Community Research Initiative; and Ranuit K. Chandra, M.D., of the Memorial University of
Newfoundland, an authority on nutrition and the immune system. It was chaired by Myron Winick, M.D., professor of pediatrics and nutrition at Columbia University. The effort was funded by a grant from Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals.

For a free copy of the brochure and article, write to the Task Force on Nutrition Support in AIDS, Wang Associates, Inc., 19 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010. Bulk copies are also available.