A woman friend of mine is HIV positive. She is suffering from wasting syndrome and lost about 17 of her body weight.

Last week Thursday I had to take her to the hospital because she had very high fever for several days. The doctor tested her for meningitis but the test was negative. When she told him that she was HIV positive the doctor immediately put her on antibiotics called ROCEPHIN for 5 days, 2 doses intravenous per day. Besides gave her other antibiotic for candida infections, 6 capsules, 1 per day. She was 2 days in the hospital but had to go out due to lack of money, so she carried on with the medicine at home.

The antibiotics had side effects that gave her nausea and loss of appetite, well that is what we believe, then she became very weak. She finished now with the antibiotics, today took the last anticandida one. She could not sleep well so she took 2 x daily doses of 1ml B12 and 1ml B complex injections. She feels fine but is still very weak.

After returning from the hospital she started to take the following daily supplements: Egg albumin, soy isolate and whey protein isolate 80g Creatine monohydrate 5g Inteflora 2 x 250mg Multivitamins Omega 3 oil 2 x 250mg Omega 6 oil 2 x 250mg L-Glutamine 2 x 500mg Co-Enzyme Q10 2 x 30mg Calcium 2 x 400mg Magnesium 2 x 200mg DHEA 1 x 25mg Immune booster 2 x tablets. Each table contains grape seed extract 70mg, plant sterols and sterolins 30mg, digestive enzymes 25mg. Milk thistle( equiv. Silybum 60mg)

Her food consists of yogurt, soup, meat, whole wheat bread and fruit but eats very little.

She is not taking any retroviral.

Is it correct what she is taking? What else do you suggest to take? How can she restore the appetite? What can be done to restore the energy levels? Recently she started to find motivation to change to a more positive attitude. Regards

Carlos

It sounds like she is taking a large number of unproven 'treatments' which may be having harmful effects or maybe interacting with each other and in reality she should be on antiretroviral medication. As you do not provide details of the counts is hard to know, but it sounds as if she would be better following proven paths of treatment rather than wasting her limited financial resources on large numbers of unproven substances. She should consult a professional dietician about ways in which she could gain weight.

I have this helps

Graeme Moyle