This edition of Dialogues in Cardiovascular Medicine is devoted to the protean and increasingly important cardiovascular manifestations of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The human carnage caused by the HIV pandemic that began about 25 years ago is difficult to comprehend. More than 40 million people had been infected by the end of 2005 and there are now approximately 5 million new infections (including 600 000 babies born with HIV) and 3 million deaths every year. Mortality has been particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 13 million children have been orphaned, and is still rising rapidly in many parts of the world, most notably Asia and Eastern Europe...