Long-term adherence to antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings: a bitter pill to swallow.
Adherence to antiretroviral therapy is an important predictor of long-term treatment success. Adherence can be differentiated between early adherence challenges, that are about integrating pill-taking into daily life, and long-term adherence, where patients struggle to maintain clinical connections and interrupt clinical care and medication use. In resource-limited settings, treatment interruptions may be more useful predictors of patient outcome than pill-taking alone. Interventions that are aimed at providing support to patients and their individual challenges to prevent interruptions in treatment and care may have a greater impact over time on clinically important outcomes than interventions targeted only at pill-taking behaviours.
Center for Global Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
David R
DR
Bangsberg
Edward J
EJ
Mills
D019380:Anti-HIV Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000188:drug therapy*; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000187:drug effects*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018894:Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D016903:Drug Monitoring
D019380:Anti-HIV Agents; D018894:Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors