Introduction

This is my first meeting since Durban, and it is quite the opposite -- it's a small meeting, around 400 people in a small hotel in a suburb of Toronto, not political at all and quite technical, focusing in molecular mechanisms of the complications of antiretroviral treatment. I am sure I will miss Africa and the global look at issues, but the contrast is nice, and I hope we learn many things in these two days about the mechanisms and potential therapeutic interventions of the metabolic complications associated with HAART.

Metabolic complications associated with treatment have been to highly active antiretroviral therapy, what the Concorde study was to the AZT monotherapy: a slap in the face, reminding everybody that nothing is simple and the war is far from over, and, in addition, that we have a lot to learn about how to better use these extremely potent drugs to help people living with HIV.

The meeting was organized in sessions (three sessions every day) with several talks and then oral presentations loosely related to the topics of the opening.