Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS, UOC Malattie Infettive, 00168, Rome, Italy.
Dipartimento di Sicurezza e Bioetica Sezione Malattie Infettive, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 00168, Rome, Italy.
AIDS Behav. 2023 Apr;27(4):1173-1181. doi: 10.1007/s10461-022-03854-8. Epub 2022 Sep 26.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people living with HIV (PLWH) could have had to face problems with treatment adherence because of the difficulty of accessing services connected with antiretroviral therapy (ART) dispensation, which could have undermined their health. In this article, we described, over the period 2015-2020, both the activities of our home care assistance unit, the "Unità di Trattamento Domiciliare (UTD)", and the characteristics of the comorbid HIV patients followed-up. To determine whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected this service, we compared the number/type of services provided in 2020 with those provided in the preceding 5 years, i.e., 2015-2019. We also compared the proportion of monthly interventions carried out in 2018, 2019 and 2020. We found comparable values with some differences in the types of performances due to the heterogeneity of the population and their medical assistance needs. We also observed a stable viro-immunological status of the patients. All of these data suggest that the UTD was consistently active during the lockdown months and pandemic waves preventing therapy discontinuation, and was able to maintain optimal control of patients' HIV infections.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间,由于难以获得与抗逆转录病毒疗法 (ART) 配给相关的服务,HIV 感染者 (PLWH) 可能不得不面临治疗依从性的问题,这可能会损害他们的健康。在本文中,我们描述了 2015 年至 2020 年期间我们的家庭护理援助单位“Unità di Trattamento Domiciliare (UTD)”的活动及其随访的合并 HIV 患者的特征。为了确定 COVID-19 大流行是否影响了这项服务,我们比较了 2020 年提供的服务数量/类型与前 5 年(即 2015-2019 年)提供的服务数量/类型。我们还比较了 2018 年、2019 年和 2020 年每月进行干预的比例。我们发现由于人群和他们的医疗援助需求的异质性,有些差异,但数值是可比的。我们还观察到患者的病毒免疫状态稳定。所有这些数据表明,UTD 在封锁期间和大流行期间一直保持活跃,防止了治疗中断,并能够保持患者 HIV 感染的最佳控制。