Pharmacy records can calculate success of HIV treatment

Researchers can improve the accuracy of predictions about whether HIV treatment will succeed or fail if they have access to information about how reliably the patient takes medication.

According to a study published in the PLoS Medicine Journal, keeping track of information from pharmacy records is at least as effective as performing blood tests to check how the medicine affects the immune system.

Researchers analysed CD4 T-cell counts, an alternative test in developing countries to blood tests, and found that pharmacy accounts showing amounts of medicine dispensed by pharmacies were more accurate than the results from CD4 counts.

The research team said that more tests are needed and the findings do not diminish the importance of CD4 monitoring.

"The ability of adherence to identify patients at high risk of virologic failure early and to provide data on the behaviour on which providers often wish to intervene should be considered a reason for clinics to organize these data in a way that can be used in simple algorithmic approaches to patient care," the researchers concluded.

Figures from the World Health Organisation estimate that more than 80 per cent of people living with HIV in low and middle-income countries are unaware that they are infected with the disease.