Medication adherence is poor among children born with HIV in the U.S. It decreases as they aged from preadolescence to adolescence and into young adulthood. The prevalence of detectable viral load increased with age, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "As they approach adulthood, many youth face challenges, such as entering new relationships, managing disclosure of their HIV status, and changing to an adult HIV care provider. Ensuring successful HIV medication adherence before and throughout adolescence is critical," said lead author Deborah Kacanek, research scientist in Harvard Chan School's Department of Biostatistics. "We found that the factors that either supported adherence and a suppressed (undetectable) viral load, or made it harder for youth to adhere to treatment, varied depending on their age."
‘Educating youth about medication adherence including age-related risks and sources of strength and resilience during different stages of development is the need of the hour.’
Read More..Tweet it Now
The study was published online in AIDS. Read More..
In the U.S., approximately 12,000 children, adolescents, and young adults are living with perinatally acquired HIV, meaning that they have lived with HIV since birth. Globally, 1.8 million adolescents live with HIV. Adhering to regimens of antiretroviral therapy (ART) is key to managing the disease and reducing the risk of transmission.
Sticking to a daily regimen of medicine, however, is especially challenging for adolescents and young adults, who are navigating a range of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional changes.
Adherence can be more complicated for youth growing up with perinatal HIV, whose lifelong experiences with HIV, stigma, and multiple antiretroviral medications may pose challenges to achieving viral suppression that are different from youth who acquire HIV later in life.
To better understand these challenges and why young people may not adhere to their medications, researchers followed 381 youth with perinatally acquired HIV for an average of 3.3 years. The youth were participants in the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Cohort Study, which follows children and youth born with HIV or born exposed at birth to HIV to determine the impact of lifelong HIV and the long-term safety of antiretroviral regimens.
Advertisement
The researchers found that from preadolescence to young adulthood, the prevalence of nonadherence increased from 31% to 50%. In addition, the prevalence of detectable viral load among the same age groups increased from 16% to 40%.
Advertisement
"It is important to talk with youth about how to take medications properly, but our study highlights the need for those who care for these youths to focus also on age-related factors that may influence adherence," Kacanek said. "Services to help support adherence need to address both the age-related risks and build on the sources of strength and resilience among youth at different stages of development."
Source-Eurekalert