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The Pros And Cons Of Antiretroviral Therapy

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There are many people with the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) receiving antiretroviral treatment who are homeless. Without stable housing, medication compliance is a major issue. Without treatment of HIV, the disease will eventually develop into AIDS, which causes many morbidities and even can end with mortality. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) can help slow the progression of HIV to AIDS however; the therapy is very expensive, which is one of the major problems with compliance among the homeless. Many homeless people who are on antiretroviral therapy will stop their treatment for reasons such as cost, substance abuse, psychiatric illness, or from the side effects with the drugs themselves (Pecoraro …show more content…

There were several limitations in this study. First, many patients may have been embarrassed or reluctant to share their difficulties with ART adherence to the interviewers. This would lead to underestimates in the barriers reported by the participants. Secondly, another limitation was sample size and geographical location. The sample size was small and only involved clients enrolled in ART in the New England area. Finally, the electronic monitoring system used to measure adherence is not completely reliable. The electronic monitoring of the medication bottles does not guarantee that the medication was taken, the cap may have simply be opened and then closed. This would cause the estimated adherence to be incorrect. This issue of measurement brings into question the validity and reliability of the results. In addition, a general linear model with generalized estimated equations was used, which could affect the reliability of the results. Some of the findings may not be generalizable outside of the New England area. However, the study did include a vastly demographically different population, which increases the generalizability. Overall, there needs to be specific, individualized, interventions to address different types of barriers such as forgetting to take medication or

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