FIRST- LINE ANTIRETROVIRAL TREATMENT FAILURE IN EAST AFRICAN CHILDREN.

Objectives: To describe the incidence of antiretroviral treatment failure and associated factors in a pediatric clinical cohort within the East African International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (EA-IeDEA) consortium.

Design: A retrospective cohort study. Clinical treatment failure was defined as advancement in clinical WHO stage, or CDC class at least 24 weeks after initiation of treatment. Immunological failure was defined as developing or returning to the following age-related immunological thresholds after at least 24 weeks on treatment; CD4 count of <200 or CD4%<10% for children aged 2-5 years and CD4 count of < 100 for a child aged > 5years.

Setting: The study utilized the electronic medical records of HIV-infected pediatric patients enrolled into the EA-IeDEA consortium clinics from January 2005 to August 2012.

Results: A total of 5927 children were included in the analysis. The estimated cumulative incidence of clinical ART treatment failure at one year and four years post ART initiation was11.5% and 31% respectively, while that of immunological treatment failure was at 3% and 22.5% respectively. The main factors associated with clinical failure were advanced clinical stage at ART-initiation, year started ART and residing in a rural area. Factors associated with immunological failure were male gender and age of the child at ART-initiation. Only 6% of those identified as having clinical treatment failure were switched to second line treatment during the four years of follow-up.

Conclusion: The probability of clinical and immunologic failure was relatively high and increased with time.