Abstract
CD4 count testing is perceived to be an affordable strategy to diagnose treatment failure on first-line antiretroviral therapy. We hypothesize that the superior accuracy of viral load (VL) testing will result in less patients being incorrectly switched to more expensive and toxic second-line regimens. Using data from a drug resistance cohort, we show that CD4 testing is approximately double the cost to make 1 correct regimen switch under certain diagnostic thresholds (CD4 = US $499 vs. VL = US $186 or CD4 = US $3031 vs. VL = US $1828). In line with World Health Organization guidelines, our findings show that VL testing can be both an accurate and cost-effective treatment monitoring strategy.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 462-466 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) |
| Volume | 71 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Antiretroviral therapy
- CD4 cell count
- Cost-effectiveness
- Drug resistance
- HIV
- Monitoring
- South Africa
- Treatment failure
- Viral load
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
- Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
