RESEARCH ARTICLE
Virological Failure and Associated Risk Factors among HIV/AIDS Pediatric Patients at the ART Clinic of Jimma university Medical Center, Southwest Ethiopia
Fozia T. Osman1, Mengist A. Yizengaw1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2020Volume: 14
First Page: 61
Last Page: 67
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-14-61
DOI: 10.2174/1874613602014010061
Article History:
Received Date: 11/12/2019Revision Received Date: 07/04/2020
Acceptance Date: 11/04/2020
Electronic publication date: 23/05/2020
Collection year: 2020

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Pediatric antiretroviral treatment failure is an under-recognized issue that receives inadequate attention in the field of pediatrics and within HIV treatment programs. Despite the reduction in morbidity and mortality, a considerable proportion of patients fail to achieve a sustained virologic response to therapy. Thus virological failure is an increasing concern globally.
Objective:
This study aimed to assess the virological failure and associated risk factors among HIV/AIDS pediatric patients at Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) follow up clinic of Jimma University Medical Center, southwest Ethiopia.
Methods:
An institution based cross-sectional study was conducted at the ART follow-up clinic of Jimma University Medical Center. A structured English version checklist was developed and used for data extraction from patients’ charts from April -May 2019. Then the data was coded and entered using epi data 4.2 and exported to statistical package for social science (SPSS version 22) for analysis. Descriptive analysis was conducted for categorical as well as continuous variables. Multivariable logistic regression was performed in a backward, step-wise manner until a best-fit model was found.
Results:
Of 140 HIV/AIDS pediatric patients enrolled in this study, 72(51.4%) were male and the mean age was 9.7±3.3 Years. ABC-3TC-NVP was the commonly used ART medication in this population, which was 37.1% followed by AZT-3TC-EFV(32.1%). The mean duration of antiretroviral treatment (ART) follow-up was 63.8±29.4 months. Among the study population, 11.0% of them had virological failure. Weight at ART initiation [OR=1.104, 95 CI% [1.013-1.203], p=0.024] and WHO clinical stage 3 [AOR=0.325, 95CI, 0.107-0.991,P=0.048] were the significant risk factors for the virological failure.
Conclusion:
A significant proportion of HIV/AIDS pediatric patients had virological failure. Weight at ART initiation and patients having WHO clinical stage 3 were risk factors associated with virological failure in this study. Governmental and non-governmental concerned bodies should invest their effort to devise strategies for the achievement of HIV/AIDS treatment targets.