Africa is the leader in identifying HIV drug resistance
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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The incidence of HIV resistance to antiretroviral drugs in African countries has grown unevenly over the past decade, the BBC reported. These data were obtained from a study conducted by an international team led by Silvia Bertagnolio of the World Health Organization (WHO). The article is published in The Lancet.
The Bertagnioli group analyzed information on 26,000 HIV patients from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This information was taken from relevant studies conducted between January 2001 and July 2011. In addition, scientists used data from the WHO program on monitoring the drug resistance of the immunodeficiency virus.
According to the study, the incidence of drug-resistant HIV in East Africa increased by 29 percent annually and averaged 7.4 percent of all infections. The annual growth rate for countries in the southern African continent was 14 percent.
In Western and Central Africa, the frequency of detecting resistant to HIV therapy increased by three percent annually. For Asian and Latin American countries, the increase in the indicator studied could not be identified.
In addition, the researchers found that the only class of antiretroviral drugs to which resistance was recorded was non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. To this group of drugs are nevirapine, delavirdine, efavirenz, etravirine and rilpivirin.
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