DOWNLOAD FULL ARTICLE
Feature – Medicine
Face Forward Elle Canada
The tools of cosmetic surgery, such as silicone for plumping lips, are being used to restore the faces of those suffering lipoatrophy, or muscle wasting, a devastating side effect of AIDS medications.
Excerpt from article:“Months before her wedding, Lagos – a former heroin addict who contracted HIV in 1990 from a boyfriend who has since died of AIDS – began to develop a condition called lipoatrophy, or loss of fat under the skin. On the day she should have felt her most beautiful, Lagos says she felt like a freak. ‘The wedding was big because I wanted to face my entire family and show them that I was clean and doing well,’ she recalls, ‘but here I was with this lipoatrophy face.’ ”