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Africa is the leader in detecting drug-resistant HIV cases
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The incidence of HIV resistance to antiretroviral drugs in African countries has increased unevenly over the past decade, the BBC reports. These data were obtained during a study conducted by an international team of specialists led by Silvia Bertagnolio from the World Health Organization (WHO). The researchers' article was published in the journal The Lancet.
Bertagnolio's team analyzed information on 26,000 HIV-infected patients from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The data came from studies conducted between January 2001 and July 2011. They also used data from the WHO's HIV drug resistance monitoring program.
According to the study, the incidence of drug-resistant HIV in East African countries increased by 29 percent annually, averaging 7.4 percent of all infections. The annual increase in the indicator for countries located in the south of the African continent was 14 percent.
In West and Central Africa, the incidence of treatment-resistant HIV increased by three percent annually. No increase in the studied indicator could be detected for Asian and Latin American countries.
The researchers also found that the only class of antiretroviral drugs to which resistance was increasing were non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, a group of drugs that includes nevirapine, delavirdine, efavirenz, etravirine, and rilpivirine.
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