Journal of Tropical Pediatrics Advance Access published online on October 1, 2008
Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, doi:10.1093/tropej/fmn080
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Safety, Tolerability and Effectiveness of Generic HAART in HIV-Infected Children in South India
aYRG Centre for AIDS Research and Education, VHS, Chennai 600113, Tamil Nadu, India
bMiriam Hospital
cBrown University Medical School, Providence, RI, USA
dAsha Kirana Foundation, Mysore, Karnataka, India
Correspondence: Dr N. Kumarasamy; Chief Medical Officer, YRG Centre for AIDS Research and Education, VHS, Taramani, Chennai 600113, India. E-mail <kumarasamy{at}yrgcare.org>.
 |
Abstract |
|---|
HIV-infected children in resource-limited settings are increasingly gaining greater access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) but documented longitudinal data remains limited. We aimed to study the clinical and immunological outcomes among 67 South Indian HIV-infected children with >18 months of follow-up on HAART at a tertiary HIV care program. The median CD4 cell count at enrolment was 290 cells µl–1 and at treatment initiation was 225 cells µl–1. Patients demonstrated a significant rise in their CD4 cell counts between treatment initiation and after 6 months (701 cells µl–1; p = 0.007), 12 months (741 cells µl–1; p = 0.037), and 18 months of therapy (718 cells µl–1; p = 0.005). The most common adverse events to therapy were nausea (20.9%) and rash (25.4%). Over one-fifth of patients (25.4%) substituted therapy due to toxicities and 19.4% of patients switched to second-line protease inhibitor-containing regimens. In this South Indian pediatric cohort, generic HAART was safe, effective and relatively well tolerated.