HIV Treatment success increased through medication assistance programme
The study reported that while HIV medication does not deliver a cure, it works so well that the life expectancy of patients is quite similar to that of healthy people
Researchers increased HIV treatment success rates by almost 18% through a new programme to help patients take their medication correctly.
Their study reported that while HIV medication does not deliver a cure, it works so well that the life expectancy of patients is quite similar to that of healthy people, while sufferers successfully treated are also extremely unlikely to transmit the virus to others.
However, a significant proportion of people with HIV take their medication too irregularly for it to work well, or discontinue their treatment entirely.
Irregular use of the medication means the virus gets a chance to replicate again and can attack the immune system - potentially leading to Aids.
Teams from the universities of Aberdeen and Maastricht and the University and Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam developed a new programme to help people take the medication, using a combination of self-management strategies, counselling and patients tracking their own medication use with electronic pill bottles.
The study found an increase in treatment success rates of almost 18% compared to patients who received regular care, while the programme was also found to be cost-saving.
Professor Marijn de Bruin from the University of Aberdeen said: “This is the first adherence intervention in HIV care that demonstrates clinical and cost effectiveness. The intervention can be applied in routine clinical care, and the effects have been reproduced in consecutive trials.
“Although today's HIV medications are very effective, they can have quite a few side-effects and people with HIV don't usually experience any symptoms of the disease, so - for these and other reasons - it is unsurprising that adherence among some patients is suboptimal.
“We designed a programme in such a way that it would fit in with routine care and only adds about 10 minutes to the consultation.
“Our intervention has proved to be very successful at improving drug-adherence and in turn reducing treatment failure. Importantly, these effects were most profound amongst patient groups from which we know struggle most with this treatment.”
Health psychologists and clinicians from Aberdeen and the Netherlands carried out a trial of their intervention programme on more than 200 patients over 15 months in seven hospitals across the Netherlands.
The amount of virus present in the blood, or viral load, was measured before and three times after the intervention.
If patients had a detectable viral load at two consecutive time points after the intervention, it was labelled as treatment failure.
Results showed a substantial reduction in treatment failure (over 60%) in those who received the intervention, compared to those who had received regular care.
The team, whose study was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, also found that if ten thousand patients were to receive the intervention, it would save approximately five million euro (£4.3 million) and lead to a gain of 340 quality-adjusted life years.