Activation and inflammation markers in HIV‐1‐infected patients in dependency of treatment strategies

Purpose of the study HIV‐1‐infected patients have elevated levels of immune activation and systemic inflammatory markers which are partially strong predictors of disease progression or are associated with increased cardiovascular risk. The dependency of anti‐retroviral treatment (ART), the usage of NNRTI or PI‐based and the application of non‐nuc regimens is analysed here on the basis of a dataset (Chronic Inflammation Dependency on TREatment: CIDRE cohort) from 1500 patients in Berlin. Methods In a retrospective analysis we compared relative CD4+ cell counts, viral load, relative CD8+CD38+DR‐and CD3+DR+cells, concentration of high‐sensitivity C‐reactive protein (hsCRP) and interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) in therapy‐naïve or treated patients dependent on usage or non‐usage of NUCs, PI or NNRTI. Statistics were performed with R (R Core Team; 2012; R: A language and environment for statistical computing) using Wilcoxon rank sum test in two‐sided analysis. Summary of results As to expect, ART‐naïve patients (n=190) had significantly higher viral loads and lower CD4+cell counts (p: both