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Use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) medication scores in HIV population
Author(s) -
Shah Anuja,
Relihan Kathleen,
Kota Anusha,
Borum Peggy
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.21.5.a697-a
Subject(s) - medicine , antiretroviral therapy , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , reverse transcriptase inhibitor , population , drug , adverse effect , viral load , pharmacology , immunology , environmental health
The use of ART in HIV treatment has resulted in increased patient longevity and drug toxicity. The aim of this study was to devise a method for quantifying patient medications. We introduced the concept of a medication (med) score that represents the ratio of amount of medication taken to the minimum recommended dosage for the patient. Med score for each individual drug was calculated and then an average total med score was assigned to each patient by averaging all the med scores in 2004–05. Similarly, protease, nucleoside reverse transcriptase and non‐nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors average med scores were calculated for each patient. Preliminary analyses on 17 patients between the ages of 3 and 20 years show that total med score is independent of the total number of drugs taken by patients (Table 1). Correlation between total number of drugs and total med score resulted in an insignificant p value of 0.9240. Hence, the number of drugs patients take does not predict the ART medication load of patients. Med scores can potentially be used to compare the drug load of different patients and to determine if higher scores are associated with any adverse effects. 1 Total med score of HIV patients