High Demand for Antiretroviral Drugs in Rural Uganda

A new study conducted by American and Ugandan researchers has found that HIV infected people living rural Uganda are willing to take antiretroviral drugs if they are available even if HIV related symptoms have not yet developed. Led by doctors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) and Makerere University School of Medicine in Kampala, Uganda, the study is the first to address such attitudes among African patients who are in the early stages of the disease and not yet sick.

Historically, treatment was initiated only when someone''s immune system had declined below a certain threshold, by which point they were sometimes already ill.

Now, mounting evidence suggests that providing antiretroviral therapy to people long before they get sick can be a direct benefit to both them and society-by keeping the individual healthy, and by reducing the transmission of HIV within communities.

Even so, scientists have known little about patients'' attitudes towards taking antiretroviral therapy in the early stages of HIV disease. "Given that there are millions of people in Africa taking antiretroviral drugs and millions more in need of them, there is surprisingly little data on patients'' attitudes in this part of the world toward the therapy itself," said Moses Kamya, a professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at Makerere University.

The new clinical study addressed these questions directly. Its first results will be revealed at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, July 22, 2012.

"There was very high interest among the people eligible for this study in taking antiretrovirals," said Vivek Jain, MD, MAS, assistant professor of medicine in the UCSF Division of HIV/AIDS at SFGH.

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In the study, 188 patients with HIV were enrolled and offered antiretroviral drugs. All had a high CD4+ T cell count (>350)-the classic measure of the immune system''s robustness and an indication of being in the early stages of disease, before a decline towards AIDS.

Almost all of the patients-186 of 188-elected to take the treatment. Ninety percent identified the main reason why they wanted to start therapy as their desire to stay healthy, 52 percent cited a desire to continue working and an equal 52 percent cited a desire to continue caring for their families. Other leading reasons patients wanted to take therapy centered around their desire not to transmit HIV to partners and future children.

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The poster, "Patient attitudes toward HIV antiretroviral therapy initiation at high CD4+ cell counts" by Vivek Jain, Dathan Byonanebye, Jemimah Muhaawe, Jane Kabami, Doug Black, Tamara Clark, Gabriel Chamie, Elvin Geng, James Rooney, Edwin Charlebois, Gideon Amanyire, Diane Havlir, Moses Kamya, and the SEARCH Collaboration will be unveiled at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 22, 2012.

ABSTRACT: http://pag.aids2012.org/abstracts.aspx?aid=5458

Besides UCSF and SFGH, authors on this study are associated with Makerere University School of Medicine in Kampala, Uganda and Gilead Sciences, Inc., in Foster City, CA. The work was part of the Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH) Collaboration, which is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the National Institutes of Health.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.

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Source-Newswise