This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Women with HIV/HCV coinfection may experience more treatment complications than men
Bhattacharya D. JAIDS. 2010; 55:170-175
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
First-dose treatment modification occurred in about half of the women being treated for both HIV and hepatitis C infection, according to a recently published meta-analysis.
Researchers from UCLA and others examined the effect that gender played on treatment modification in three randomized trials involving patients with HIV/HCV coinfection: ACTG 5071, APRICOT and ANRSHCO2-RIBAVIC of Interferon and Pegylated IFN, both with and without ribavirin.
The analysis included 1,376 patients; 21% of whom were women. Of those women, 61% had undetectable HIV RNA levels and 14% were ART-naive at baseline. The initial median CD4 count was 485 cells/mL3.
Adverse events requiring termination were observed in 17% of women, and first-dose modification occurred in 50% of women. The researchers noted that women were more likely than men to have an adverse event requiring termination (24% vs. 16%, P=0.003) and to experience first-dose modification (61% vs. 48%, P0.0001).
The researchers noted similarities between both men and women in the types of treatment-terminating adverse events and first-dose modifications observed.
Depression was linked to 18% of treatment terminations, and neutropenia was linked to 26% of first-dose modifications.
More treatment-terminating events were experienced by men with a lower BMI (P=0.01) and women receiving NNRTIs (P=0.009).
The first-dose modifications occurred more frequently in ART-naive women (P=0.06), women taking zidovudine (P=0.0002) and ART-experienced men (P=0.001).
ART regimen may be an important predictor of treatment-terminating adverse events during HCV therapy and should be explored as a predictor of adverse events in HIV/HCV coinfection trials, the researchers concluded.