This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Carl R. Merril; Michael G. Harrington
Trey Sunderland National Institute of Mental Health Bethesda, Md

JAMA. 1989;261(8):1149.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Death from all causes has been correlated with decreased levels of plasma dehydroepiandrosterone.¹ The large number of patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and its poor prognosis,² have prompted us to investigate whether there is a correlation between infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and plasma dehydroepiandrosterone levels.

Three additional avenues of investigation have suggested to us that dehydroepiandrosterone may be influenced by infections with HIV. First, plasma levels of dehydroepiandrosterone are age dependent, with low levels in childhood and in older adults,³ the ages that have the poorest prognosis for patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.² Second, there are many disease correlations with plasma dehydroepiandrosterone: in humans, low plasma dehydroepiandrosterone levels have been recorded in women with breast tumors^4,5; in rodents, a diet supplemented with dehydroepiandrosterone protects against breast tumors,⁶ diabetes,⁷ obesity,⁷ autoimmune nephritis,⁸ and viral infections and chemically . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?