Prevention-Care Synergy
In addition to the benefits antiretroviral therapy has for the individual being treated (Komanduri and others 1998; Ledergerber and others 2001), it almost certainly has other effects on populations where therapy is widely available. Effective antiretroviral therapy appears to decrease the infectiousness of treated individuals. Chemoprophylaxis in exposed, uninfected people may reduce transmission. In addition, availability of treatment may destigmatize the disease and make prevention programs more effective (Castro and Farmer 2005).
However, these benefits in relation to reduced transmission may be offset by a "disinhibition" of risk behavior that is associated with greater availability of antiretroviral therapy, by the spread of drug-resistant HIV, or by increases in the incidence of exposure to partners with HIV infection because of increased survival. These sometimes opposing effects of offering therapy may differ to such a degree that the net effects of widespread therapy on transmission rates may vary among risk groups and across geographic regions.
Table 18.6 reviews the information available on the population effects of antiretroviral therapy and makes suppositions about potential effects for those areas for which data and research are lacking. The information in the table suggests that widespread therapy using currently available combination regimens will provide a net benefit in relation to the transmission of HIV. However, because confidence in this prediction is not high, the population consequences of therapy programs must be evaluated and monitored with active surveillance of prescribing patterns, sexual risk behavior, STI prevalence, HIV incidence and prevalence, and prevalence of primary drug resistance and sexual networks of risk behavior.
[Table .]
