Starting Antiretroviral Therapy on the Same Day as an HIV Diagnosis in British Columbia

published on October 6, 2015 by Sean R. Hosein, in The Body Pro

It is likely that immediate HIV treatment will become the standard of care in high-income countries when this viral infection is diagnosed in the future. It is therefore important to assess programs that offer immediate HIV treatment in order to determine their effectiveness and the attitudes toward them by newly diagnosed people.

Before we delve into the main part of this report, we first provide some background information about acute or very early HIV infection.

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In British Columbia

Two clinics that screen for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Vancouver used NAATs to help identify people undergoing acute HIV infection. As mentioned earlier in this issue of TreatmentUpdate, offering immediate treatment for HIV infection has many benefits. Researchers in B.C. therefore decided to assess their program that offered immediate ART upon HIV diagnosis.

Study Details

Researchers with the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver assessed a program in which participants were offered two choices after an HIV diagnosis:

counselling and referral to care (as has traditionally been the case)
counselling and referral to rapid, same-day connection to an HIV specialist and, if needed, additional resources such as peer navigators, primary care doctors and social workers

The research team reviewed health-related information collected between January 2013 and October 2014 from two STI clinics in Vancouver. As part of this study, participants were also briefly interviewed.

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BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Starting Antiretroviral Therapy on the Same Day as an HIV Diagnosis in British Columbia

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