NYMC Faculty Publications
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0169871
Journal Title
PLoS One
First Page
e0169871
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Department
Epidemiology and Community Health
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Despite the World Health Organization (WHO) regularly updating guidelines to recommend earlier initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in children, timely enrollment into care and initiation of ART in sub-Saharan Africa in children lags behind that of adults. The impact of implementing increasingly less restrictive ART guidelines on ART initiation in Central Africa has not been described. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data are from the Central Africa International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) pediatric cohort of 3,426 children (0-15 years) entering HIV care at 15 sites in Burundi, DRC, and Rwanda. Measures include CD4 count, WHO clinical stage, age, and weight-for-age Z score (WAZ), each at enrollment into HIV care and at ART initiation. Changes in the medians or proportions of each measure by year of enrollment and year of ART initiation were assessed to capture potential impacts of changing ART guidelines. RESULTS: Median age at care enrollment decreased from 77.2 months in 2004-05 to 30.3 months in 2012-13. The median age at ART initiation (n = 2058) decreased from 83.0 months in 2004-05 to 66.9 months in 2012-13. The proportion of children
Recommended Citation
Adedimeji, A., Edmonds, A., Hoover, D., Shi, Q., Sinayobye, J., Nduwimana, M., Lelo, P., Nash, D., Anastos, K., & Yotebieng, M. (2017). Characteristics of HIV-infected Children at Enrollment Into Care and at Antiretroviral Therapy Initiation in Central Africa. PLoS One, 12 (1), e0169871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169871
Publisher's Statement
Originally published in PLoS One, 12 (1), e0169871. The original material can be found here.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.