Among middle-aged women with and without HIV, increased severity of peripheral artery disease (PAD) was tied to increasingly slower gait speed, according to findings published in AIDS. Emily R. Cedarbaum, MD, and colleagues aimed to determine the impact of PAD on functional decline, controlling for traditional cardiovascular risk factors and HIV-related factors. They included 1,839 participants (median age, 50; >70% Black) with measured ankle-brachial index (ABI) and 4-minute gait speed; ABI values classified PAD severity. Compared with normal ABI, there was a dose-response relationship between increasing PAD severity and decreasing gait speed in univariable analyses: 6% slower gait speed for low-normal ABI (95% CI, 4% to 9%), 10% for borderline PAD (95% CI, 6% to 13%), 14% for mild PAD (95% CI, 9% to 18%), and 16% for moderate-severe PAD (95% CI, 5% to 25%). HIV/hepatitis C virus co-infection was independently associated with 9% (95% CI, 4% to 14%) slower gait speed. For women with HIV, neither CD4+ cell count nor HIV-RNA level was associated with gait speed.
