The objective of this study was to evaluate how much limb fat is needed to be lost for lipoatrophy to become
clinically evident. Antiretroviral drug-naive patients from a randomized trial comparing stavudine or abacavir
plus lamivudine and efavirenz, who had subjective assessment to detect clinically evident lipoatrophy (standardized
questionnaire) and objective measurements of limb fat (dual X-ray absorptiometry) at baseline, 48 weeks,
and 96 weeks were included. ROC curves were used to assess the sensitivity and specificity of several cut-off
values of absolute and percent limb fat loss for diagnosing lipoatrophy. Of 54 patients included, 13 (24%) had
subjective lipoatrophy at 96 weeks. After 96 weeks, median limb fat change was
