http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/health/for-heroin-users-less-may-be-worse-for-hiv-.html 2014-12-22 22:40:18 For Heroin Users, Less May Be Worse for H.I.V. A study shows that in a year, those who used heroin only intermittently lost more CD4 blood cells than those who did not use it. Tegular users had a slightly higher CD4 count. === Occasional heroin use may be worse for the immune system than continual heroin use, according to a new study. Many heroin users are infected with All appeared to be newly infected, and none were yet on triple-drug therapy. Over the course of the year, those who used heroin only intermittently, meaning they repeatedly went through withdrawal, lost more CD4 blood cells — a measure of immune function — than those who did not use it at all. More baffling, those who used heroin regularly actually had, on average, slightly higher CD4 counts by year’s end. “That was a surprise, and we don’t know why it happened. Chance?” said Dr. Jeffrey H. Samet, an addiction and H.I.V. specialist at Boston University Medical School and one of the authors of One possible explanation, he said, is that addicts too poor to get heroin regularly may also not get enough food; starvation also suppresses immune function. Another author, Dr. E. Jennifer Edelman, an addiction-H.I.V. specialist from Yale, called the study “very preliminary” but consistent with There may be some interdependence between the receptors that H.I.V. uses to enter cells and those that opioids use, Dr. Edelman said, but scientists do not understand it.