Kidney failure during HIV disease treated with tenofovir, multiple concurrent diseases and drug therapies

A significant case report of a HIV infected patient in his fifties who experienced an excellent virological and immunological response to antiretroviral therapy (which has been modified just to prevent or avoid some adverse events), but developed a severe, sudden acute kidney failure while under a polypharmacy due to some underlying and overwhelming disorders (i.e. arterial hypertension, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, a recent acute heart infarction with remarkable remnants, and finally an anecdotal muscle-joint pain with self-prescription of non-steroideal anti-inflammatory drugs), represents the key point for a debate around the increasing frequency of “polypharmacy” in the field of HIV infection, even when HIV resistance to antiretroviral is not a concern. The continuing increase of mean age of HIV-infected population, plus the existing, sometimes unmodifiable risk factors for cardiovascular, dysmetabolic, and renal disorders, plus the adjunct of anecdotal illnesses prompting the resort to different drugs and medications, either prescribed for HIV infection itself, or taken for concurrent or subsequent diseases, or self-prescribed occasionally due to an intercurrent, trivial disorders per se, may prompt a complicated scenario culminating with a life-threatening acute renal failure of tubular origin. Our report gives us the opportunity to revise and discuss the expected interactions between antiretroviral therapy and the even growing exposure to multiple different drug and drug classes, which may be responsible for relevant drug interactions and direct or adjunctive end-organ impairment, up to life-threatening conditions, which may be avoided or prevented by considering carefully all comorbidites and co-treatments potentially administered to HIV infected patients, thirty years after the discovery of AIDS.