Drugs Don't Work for Half of China's AIDS Patients, Study Says

A new study of China's free antiretroviral (ARV) program finds nearly half of patients receiving treatment stopped responding to the drugs after five years and were unable to access second-line medicines available in developed countries.

Fujie Zhang of China's Center for Disease Control and colleagues examined 48,785 HIV/AIDS patients who received treatment under the government program from 2002 to 2008. While ARVs slowed AIDS-related deaths over the study period, they were ineffective in 50 percent of the group, according to the investigators. The findings are similar to those for other low- and middle-income countries, they noted.

China's ARV program includes generic versions of medicines such as GlaxoSmithKline's Retrovir and Epivir and Boehringer Ingelheim's Viramune. More expensive second-line drugs that were previously unavailable in China are now being introduced by the program, Zhang and colleagues said. "The challenge will be to scale up access in a way that does not merely postpone treatment failure and the need for third-line treatment," they said.

The study, "Five-Year Outcomes of the China National Free Antiretroviral Treatment Program," was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2009;151(4):241-251).

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