6:49PM
A Dose of Medical News #1.3 - Deferring HIV Treatment
Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 6:49PM This is an interesting one. The NA-ACCORD group looked at more than 17000 patient with HIV in Canada and America. First they look at those with CD4 counts of between 351 and 500; which 25% of them took up HAART and the rest deferred. In the group that deferred, there is 69% access mortality (p<0.001). They also looked at another cohort with CD4 counts of more than 500. Again, in this group 24% of people took up HAART. There is 94% excess death in the deferred group.
The conclusion, early treatment seems to be better. However, oftentimes it is hard to justify starting treatment in asymptomatic patient with near normal CD4 counts. I shall refer to my ID physicians here for further comments.
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