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Title: Antiretrovirals Offer Similar Survival Rates for Injecting Drug Users and Non-Users With HIV: Presented at AIDS 2008
URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/226F82.htm
Doctor's Guide
August 4, 2008

By Ed Susman

MEXICO CITY -- August 4, 2008 -- Patients with a history of injection drug use who are treated for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) appear to have similar survival rates as their treatment counterparts who are not injecting drug users, according to research presented here at the 17th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2008).

"A large number of prior reports have demonstrated that because of issues of social instability related to illicit drug addiction, HIV-infected injecting drug users may not be deriving full benefits of HAART," said Julio Montaner, MD, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Dr. Montaner, the president-elect of the International AIDS Society, noted that when he and his colleagues reviewed the prospective data collected in British Columbia (where universal healthcare is available) from August 1996 through June 2006, the difference in mortality between the 2 groups was not significant.

Nine hundred fifteen HIV patients had histories of injecting drug use and 2,201 patients were not injecting drug users. Out of these 3,116 patients, 622 individuals died, Dr. Montaner said, speaking August 3 at a media briefing held by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He noted that 232 (26.5%) of the deaths occurring during the 84-month period were among injecting drug users; 390 (21.6%) of the non-injecting drug users died during the study timeframe. The difference in percentages did not reach statistical significance (P = .47).

"When nonaccidental deaths were considered, the differences [in percentages of deaths] were even tighter," Dr. Montaner added. About 22% of injecting drug users died of nonaccidents, compared with about 17% of non-injecting drug users (P = .96).

"Based on these results, we conclude that HAART regimens may have effectiveness at a population level that is not significantly different regarding the survival of individuals with and without a history of injection drug use," Dr. Montaner concluded.

The study will appear this week in the HIV/AIDS-themed issue of JAMA on August 6, 2008.


[Presentation title: Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy and Survival in HIV-Infected Injection Drug Users.]

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