Treatment News

Compiled by Gus Cairns

Women more likely to be non progressors?

A study from Germany has found that women form a higher than average proportion of HIV patients who are so-called Long Term Non-Prog ressors (LTNPs).

Exactly who is a LTNP varies by definition, but for this study, the researchers defined LTNPs as HIV-positive people who had maintained a viral load below 500 without HIV treatment for at least ten years.

Sixty-one patients from 13 Germany HIV clinics fulfilled this criterion. Nearly half (48%) were women, even though the proportion of people with HIV in Germany who are female is only 15%.

Conversely only 30% of LTNPs were gay men, compared with 60% of the HIV-positive population in Germany.

Over 7.5 years of observation, 87% of the LTNP group had no viral load (VL) over 500 and 50% had no VL over 50.

During this time CD4 counts fell slightly, by 57 cells on average, but this wasn’t a statistically significant decline. Just four (6.5%) of patients had to start HIV treatment, two due to declining CD4 counts and two due to rising viral load.

The 30 patients who maintained viral loads under 50 fall into the group known as ‘elite controllers’ who manage the rare trick of having an effective immune response to HIV. About one in 300 HIV-positive people falls into this category and, needless to say, they are of great interest to researchers who want to know how they do it. An international study is recruiting them (see www.massgeneral.org).
It is not known whether other studies have noted a higher than average proportion of women in this category, though women in general do tend to have lower viral loads than men.

• 11th European AIDS Conference, abstract #P6.5/02#P6.5/02

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