Some HIV-positive women in Canada have poorer responses to therapy

published on February 1, 2014 in CATIE

Potent combination therapy for HIV (commonly called ART or HAART) can improve and maintain the health of people who use it. In Canada and similar countries researchers have found that the benefits of ART are so tremendous that rates of AIDS-related infections and deaths associated with AIDS have significantly declined since 1996. Furthermore, researchers predict that a young adult who is infected today and is diagnosed and initiates treatment shortly thereafter and who is engaged in their care and treatment and does not have co-morbidities (such as untreated or poorly managed depression, schizophrenia, addiction or co-infections) is likely to survive for several decades.

Focus on women

Although there have been massive reductions in AIDS-related illnesses and deaths, other troubling trends exist. For instance, in the past decade thousands of new HIV infections have occurred in Canada and women now make up nearly 25% of the population with this infection. As a comparison, in the first two decades of the HIV epidemic in Canada, women comprised 12% of cases.

In three provinces—A summary

Researchers in three provinces—British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec—recently analysed health-related information collected from 5,442 HIV-positive people since the year 2000. The researchers found that women generally began ART at an earlier age than men and that women were more likely than men to disclose that they injected street drugs. However, regardless of their history of injecting drugs, women in this study were less likely than men to achieve an HIV viral load less than 50 copies/ml. Furthermore, even if they did manage to get their viral load below the 50-copy threshold, women were more likely to have this degree of virologic control as a temporary event, as their viral loads would eventually rise above the 1,000 copies/ml level.

Sean R. Hosein
CATIE
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BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Some HIV-positive women in Canada have poorer responses to therapy

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