In July 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new guidelines entitled, "Antiretroviral Drugs for Treating Pregnant Women and Preventing HIV Infection in Infants: Towards universal access." Previewed in November 2009 in abridged form, the completed document highlights the key WHO recommendations for antiretroviral treatment (ART) and prophylaxis in pregnant women, and contains subst...

Brazil provides free antiretroviral (ARV) therapy to some 150,000 individuals living with HIV/ AIDS). ARV regimens require optimal adherence to achieve undetectable viral loads and to avoid viral resistance. Physicians play a key role to foster ARV adherence, but until now little is known about the communication between physicians/ people living with HIV/AIDS in this setting. In-depth interview...

Antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment for AIDS dramatically improves health status and increases life expectancy, but there is little evidence on whether it improves employment outcomes in developing countries. In this paper, I examine the labor market e↵ects of the government provision of free ARV treatment in public health clinics in South Africa, which enrolled over 500,000 patients between 20...

BACKGROUND Antiretroviral drugs (ARV), specifically nucleoside analogs, are toxic to mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. Other metabolic pathways, such as fatty acid oxidation, organic acid metabolism and amino acid metabolism, are dependent on normal oxidative phosphorylation but remain unexamined as potential points of ARV toxicity. METHODS We analyzed newborn screening data from New Y...

OBJECTIVES To examine the extent to which costs of subsidized antiretrovirals treatment (ART) programmes are catastrophic and the benefit incidence that accrues to different population groups. METHODS Data on expenditures to patients for receiving treatment from a government subsidized ART clinic was collected using a questionnaire. The patient costs excluded time and other indirect costs. Ca...

BACKGROUND Adherence to care and treatment are essential for HIV-infected individuals to benefit from antiretroviral therapy (ART). We sought to quantify the effects on treatment outcomes of missing visits soon after initiating ART. METHODS We analyzed data from HIV-infected patients initiating ART at Themba Lethu Clinic, Johannesburg, South Africa, from April 2004 to August 2008. We used log...

Purpose of study HIV patients often take complicated regimens with high propensity for drug-drug interactions (DDIs). Physician awareness has been found to be low, and recognition relies on a comprehensive and current medication history. Patients may receive treatment from various sources such as other hospital departments, their GP, over the counter from a pharmacy or via the internet. Patient...

Purpose of the study Real world data on the development of drug resistance after virologic failure (VF) on a protease inhibitor (PI)based antiretroviral (ARV) regimen are limited. The I50L substitution in protease is the primary mutation associated with atazanavir drug resistance. The primary objective was to compare the prevalence of I50L from VF patients on an unboosted atazanavir (ATV)-based...

Background: New antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and improved formulations and coformulations of existing ARVs are actively promoted to diminish a patient’s pill burden and to minimise the opportunity for mismatched dosing, although the effect of these advances is poorly understood. We determine how these changes affect the total daily pill burden (TDPB) for ARV and other drug use over a 20-year peri...

BACKGROUND Increasing rates of non-AIDS defining illnesses, and in particular liver diseases, have been found after the initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy. However, there is little evidence concerning the risk factors for and clinical characteristics of liver disease in antiretroviral (ARV)-treated HIV infection, in the absence of hepatitis B or C viral co-infection. METHODS A...