This article is part of the supplement: Abstracts of the Ninth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection .

Poster presentation

Protease inhibitor-induced cardiotoxicity: direct effects on cell viability and intracellular calcium levels

JP Spiers¹, C Edwards¹, A Rietz¹, E Jan², F Mulcahy³, M Hennessy¹, Y Volkov¹ and AM Davies¹

¹  Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

²  University of Michigan, Michigan, USA

³  St James' Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

corresponding author email

from Ninth International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection
Glasgow, UK. 9–13 November 2008

Journal of the International AIDS Society 2008, 11(Suppl 1):P91doi:10.1186/1758-2652-11-S1-P91

Published:	10 November 2008

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

Long-term use of protease inhibitors (PIs) is associated with increased cardiovascular risk linked to metabolic imbalance and endothelial dysfunction. The direct effects of PIs on cardiomyocytes have not been studied, but may be critical to our understanding of the cellular mechanisms contributing to ART-associated cardiovascular dysfunction in HIV patients. This study aims to assess the effects of antiviral agents on cell survival and intracellular calcium levels in cardiomyoblasts (H9c2).