Study Says Drug Addicts Benefit From HIV Drugs, Too

HIV-infected injection drug users can benefit from AIDS drugs the same as other patients with the virus, Canadian researchers reported Sunday at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

"Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is often withheld from injection drug users (IDUs) infected with [HIV] based on the belief that their unstable lifestyles may predetermine a markedly inferior outcome with HAART," the authors wrote in their introduction.

The team studied 3,116 HIV-positive patients naïve to HAART at clinics in British Columbia between August 1996 and June 2006 of whom 915 (29.4 percent) were IDUs. All received HAART. During five years of follow-up, 662 patients (20 percent) died: 232 IDUs (26.5 percent) and 390 non-IDUs (21.6 percent). After adjustments were made for age, sex, baseline AIDS diagnosis and other factors, the risk of death for both groups was found to be similar.

"In this study population, injection drug use was not associated with decreased survival among HIV-infected patients initiating HAART," the authors concluded.

The report, "Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy and Survival in HIV-Infected Injection Drug Users," was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (2008;300(5):550-554).

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