Unveiling HIV patients’ new killer
Dr Sumy Thomas will be researching how HIV, ARVS affect endocrine system, leading to strokes and more
A SPECIALIST physician will be conducting research on a new phenomenon being seen in HIV patients.
While once they were improving with antiretroviral treatment, they are now dying of strokes, heart attacks and diabetes more than from Hiv-related causes.
Dr Sumy Thomas said HIV patients were developing cardiometabolic disease.
“Research worldwide tends to suggest that these diseases are more common in HIV patients than the general population,” said Thomas.
Thomas, 33, was awarded the prestigious 2020 Discovery Foundation MGH Award, which gives her the opportunity to spend a year of medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, in the US. She will probably travel when restrictions are lifted.
Her research will explore how
HIV and antiretroviral medicine affects the endocrine system.
“This will strongly address a need in the South African population. We have an estimated 7.7 million people living with HIV – the largest pandemic in the world.
“While ARVS have helped give longevity to patients in the past decade, we are now seeing larger number of patients at risk for cardio-metabolic disease, including dysglycaemia and fatty liver disease, which could be a result of the virus itself or from ARV therapy.
“This area needs to be explored further,” she said.
“Diabetes is such an epidemic. “Especially being of South Indian descent, I have seen the devastating effects on my family members who are predisposed to the condition.
“I also wanted to choose a topic that would be relevant to global health,” she said.
Diabetes was becoming more prevalent and aggressive and was manifesting at an early age.
“This could be tied to urbanisation of the population and unhealthier lifestyles people are living. The more fatalities it causes in HIV patients is what is of concern.”
When asked about diabetes particularly in the Indian community, Thomas said the risk was higher for diabetes, heart disease and cholesterol.
“Change must be made from teens. Keeping physically active, having an appropriate healthy diet and going for screening for health diseases should start from an early age. Don’t wait, as an Indian person, to get symptoms of diabetes at whatever age. You should be screening from early on to be able to treat a disease like cholesterol or diabetes early,” she said.
Her goal is to specialise in endocrinology which is the study of glands and hormones.
“I want to try to find a relevant way to apply that with the South African context.
“A very topical research point at the moment is metabolic problems in patients with HIV.”
Thomas, who grew up in Kokstad and matriculated at Pietermaritzburg Girls’ High, specialises in internal medicine, which is adult nonsurgical specialised medicine.
It is usually organ related problems that do not need surgical input. Thomas has been in the front line of the Covid-19 pandemic, running one of the dedicated coronavirus wards at Leratong Hospital in Krugersdorp.
She said it was challenging and emotionally and physically taxing.
“All doctors, whether in the public or private sector, are working harder, particularly doctors in internal medicine. When you see your colleagues – from the porter to the kitchen staff, to nurses, to doctors – doing it with you, everyone who enters the hospital knows it’s team camaraderie.
“We all know we are at risk but know we all in it together,” said Thomas.
She wished everyone would take this seriously and follow the national lockdown regulations.
“Covid-19 is such a clever, novel virus that its creating a lot of internal medicine problems.
“We are seeing that it raises your sugar, causes blood clots in multiple areas of your body. Being a specialist physician, I am applying my knowledge in the setting of Covid.
“Everyone must be proud of themselves for whatever hand they playing in this pandemic.
“People don’t realise the smallest amount of change one person makes in the grand scheme makes such a big change.
“People must take care of their physical and mental health because you are seeing and hearing a lot of distressing news daily,” she said.