Abstract

Over the last 3 decades since the first AIDS cases appeared, we have witnessed great progress in therapeutic methodologies that have transformed the evolution of the disease from debilitating and fatal, into chronic and controllable. HIV-infected children are arriving at adolescence and bringing specific challenges, not only to themselves, but also to their families and caregivers. This retrospective study sets forth epidemiological and treatment characteristics of 46 HIV-infected adolescents followed in a specialized university service relating said characteristics to therapy adherence assessed through a combination of three indirect methods. Therapy adherence did not reveal any association with either epidemiologic characteristics regarding age, sex, school level, household composition, age at diagnosis, mode of infection, knowledge of diagnosis, treatment time, or initial antiretroviral scheme. Patients with good therapy adherence presented lower viral load and used a smaller number of antiretroviral schemes.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-18-2009

Notes/Citation Information

Published in The Scientific World Journal, v. 9, p. 1273-1285.

Copyright © 2009 Julia K. C. Machado et al.

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

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2009.136

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