Pharmacist-led Counselling Intervention to Improve Antiretroviral Drug Adherence in Pakistan: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Date
2020
Authors
Chatha, ZF
Rashid, U
Olsen, S
Din, FU
Khan, A
Nawaz, K
Gan, SH
Khan, GM
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract

BACKGROUND: Pakistan is facing a growing population of people living with human immunodeficiency (HIV). In this randomized controlled trial, we investigate if a pharmacist-led intervention can increase adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people living with HIV (PLWH). METHODS: Adults with HIV, who have been taking ART for more than 3 months were randomly assigned to receive either a pharmacist-led intervention or their usual care. Measures of adherence were collected at 1) baseline 2) just prior to delivery of intervention and 3) 8 weeks later. The primary outcomes were CD4 cell count and self-reported adherence measured with the AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) questionnaire. RESULTS: Post-intervention, the intervention group showed a statistically significant increase in CD4 cell counts as compared to the usual care group (p = 0.0054). In addition, adherence improved in the intervention group, with participants being 5.96 times more likely to report having not missed their medication for longer periods of time (p = 0.0086) while participants in the intervention group were 7.74 times more likely to report missing their ART less frequently (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: The findings support the improvement in ART adherence and HIV management. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The trial is registered with Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ( ACTRN12618001882213 ). Registered 20 November 2018.

Description
Keywords
ART adherence , Counselling , HIV , Pharmacist intervention , Prevention
Source
BMC Infectious Diseases, 20(1), 1-10.
Rights statement
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.