HIV therapy adherence and outcomes in Peruvian military personnel over a 30-year period
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Gabriel De la Cruz Ku 1 * , Christian Rojas Contreras 2 , Diego Chambergo-Michilot 1 , J. Smith Torres-Roman 3 , Fortunato S. Príncipe-Meneses 4 , Flavia Rioja Torres 1 , Fátima Campana Zamudio 1 , Gonzalo Pérez Pachas 1 , Alfredo Huamán Modesto 1 , Victoria Chavez 5
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1 Universidad Científica del Sur, Lima, PERU2 Department of Infectious Diseases, Hospital Nacional Edgardo Rebagliati Martins, Lima, PERU3 South American Center for Education and Research in Public Health, Universidad Norbert Wiener, Lima, PERU4 Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Lima, PERU5 Internal Medicine, Hospital Militar Central “Luis Arias Schereiber”, Lima, PERU* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Objectives: We aimed to describe the sociodemographic, clinical, and therapeutic characteristics of Peruvian military personnel diagnosed with HIV. Furthermore, we determined the frequency of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) adherence, the complications and mortality.
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients diagnosed with HIV, confirmed by Western blot at a single institution from 1989-2020. Descriptive analyses were performed for all the variables using mean and standard deviation (SD) in the case of quantitative variables, and frequency and percentage for qualitative variables.
Results: Of the 161 patients included, 95.7% were males and the mean age was 39.59 years (SD= 16.45 years). Most had college or higher education (67.7%) and were on active duty at diagnosis (77%). 35.4% had AIDS at diagnosis; 28.6% opportunistic infections; and 8.1% tuberculosis. The median follow-up was five years. 94.4% of the patients received HAART as the principal treatment; of these, 88.8% was adherent to treatment, and death was reported in 6.8%. There were no factors associated with adherence.
Conclusions: Although the sociodemographic characteristics of Peruvian military personnel are similar to those of other countries, our findings suggest that Peruvian military personnel present higher adherence to HAART compared to previous studies in other military populations from South American countries. Further studies are recommended to assess specific factors attributed to these successful outcomes in the military personnel that can be applied in other hospitals.

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Original Article

ELECTRON J GEN MED, 2023, Volume 20, Issue 2, Article No: em443

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejgm/12776

Publication date: 01 Mar 2023

Online publication date: 01 Jan 2023

Article Views: 903

Article Downloads: 853

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