Intervention reduces alcohol use, improves HIV viral suppression
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A brief intervention that included cognitive behavioral and motivational enhancement therapy improved alcohol abstinence and viral suppression among Vietnamese patients with HIV through 52 weeks, according to a study in JAMA Network Open.
Vivian F. Go, PhD, a professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, and colleagues conducted a three-group, randomized trial that included 440 adults with HIV at seven ART clinics in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam. They included individuals receiving ART with hazardous alcohol use — defined as a score of 4 or higher in men or 3 or higher in women on the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test — who did not have plans to leave Thai Nguyen.
They assigned 146 participants to a standard-of-care group, 147 to a nine-session (six in-person and three optional group sessions) combined motivation enhancement and cognitive behavioral therapy group, and 147 to a brief, four-session (two in-person and two telephone sessions) combination motivational enhancement and cognitive behavioral therapy intervention.
After 12 months, the average percentage of days abstinent from alcohol was 65% in both the combined and brief intervention groups and 50% in the standard-of-care group (95% CI, 15%-64%). Additionally, viral suppression after 12 months was higher in the brief intervention group compared with the standard-of-care group (difference = 11%; 95% CI, 2%-20%), but not significantly different between the combined and standard-of-care intervention groups.
The authors noted that the majority of participants — 96.8% — in the study were men.
“This was expected, given that 65% of [people living with HIV] are men and most individuals with alcohol use disorder in Vietnam are men,” the researchers wrote. “Therefore, we anticipate that our findings will generalize to our target population in Vietnam, although they may not be generalizable to other contexts in which women account for a greater proportion of people with HIV and people with alcohol use disorders.”
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