Immediate ART treatment led to better dyslipidemia outcomes

WASHINGTON — Thai and Cambodian children who were at risk for HIV and immediately assigned to an antiretroviral regimen containing nevirapine actually had less dyslipidemia than those children who received treatment later, according to study findings presented during the XIX International AIDS Conference held here.

Suparat Kanjanavanit, MD, of the Nakornping Hospital, Chiang Mai, Thailand, and colleagues presented substudy data from children who were enrolled in the PREDICT trial. One hundred twenty-nine children had immediate access to the nevirapine-based ART regimen, and 134 children had a delay in treatment. The median age of children included in the randomized trial was 6.5 years.

The researchers said in those children who had immediate access to treatment, “the mean differences over 144 weeks between the immediate arm vs. the deferred arm … were significant for all lipid parameters: [total cholesterol] (20.2, P<.001), triglyceride (–9.8, P=.006), LDL (9.1, P<.001) and HDL (13, P<.001), whereas only HDL was significantly different when the immediate arm were compared to the deferred arm children with ART (n=61) (4.9, P=.001).

“This (study) supports earlier nevirapine-based initiation to achieve favorable lipid profile in children with mild-to-moderate HIV-associated immune deficiency,” the researchers concluded in their abstract.

For more information:

Kanjanavanit S. MOAB0201. Presented at: XIX International AIDS Conference; July 22-27, 2012; Washington, D.C.