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People with HIV outside continuous care contribute disproportionately to viral load and infection potential, Canadian study finds
Gus Cairns, 2013-06-29 08:40:00
A study from Calgary in Canada has found that people who were in continuous care for a year, although representing nearly 80% of all people with diagnosed HIV, contributed less than 30% of the total viral load within the diagnosed HIV-positive community.
It found that while people who were newly diagnosed accounted for 37.5% of the total viral load, the other 33% was accounted for by a mix of people arriving from other areas, returning to care after an absence, moving away or being lost to care.
What the researchers in this study call ‘churn’ – a term used to mean patient movement in or out of a community – may therefore be contributing about a third of the total infection potential within that community, if conditions are similar to those in Calgary.
Given that absence from and loss to care are potentially modifiable, efforts to ensure that people living with HIV stay in care could form a significant part of efforts to use HIV therapy to reduce HIV incidence (so-called 'treatment as prevention' or TasP).
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