Predictors for viral load suppression among HIV positive adults under ART treatment in University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital: retrospective cohort study

Abstract

HIV continues to be a serious global public health concern, having 40.4 million lives up to now and continuing to spread throughout all countries. The objective of this study was to identify predictors for viral load suppression among HIV positive adults under ART treatment in University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia. An institution based retrospective cohort study design was carry out from 30th March 2017–30th March 2022.Accelerated failure time model were employed to get wide-ranging information about adult HIV positive patients. In this study out of 378 study participants, about 77.8% were suppressed viral load count and the rest were censored. The Weibull AFT model results revealed that predictors were older age (φ = 0.774, 95% CI 0.602–0.793), primary educators (φ = 0.931, 95% CI 0.809–0.964), patients disclosed the disease to family member (φ = 1.093, 95% CI 1.001–1.457), viral load < 10,000 copies/mL (φ = 1.153, 95% CI 1.015–1.309), hemoglobin level ≥ 11g/dL (φ = 1.145, 95% CI 1.028–1.275), CD4 cell count ≥ 200 per mm3 (φ = 1.147, 95% CI 1.019–1.290), weight ≥ 50 kg (φ = 1.151, 95% CI 1.033–1.275), BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 kg/m3 (φ = 1.143, 95% CI 1.007–1.296), fair treatment adherence (φ = 1.867, 95% CI 1.778–1.967), good treatment adherence (φ = 1.200, 95% CI 1.046–1.377), advanced WHO clinical stages (φ = 0.923, 95% CI 0.899–0.946), patients with OCC (φ = 0.821, 95% CI 0.720–0.936) and substance use (φ = 0.876, 95% CI 0.773–0.993) statistically significant predictors for viral load suppression at 5% level of significance. Then, near intensive care of adult patients’ whose ages between 25 and 34 years, primary educational level, advanced WHO clinical stage, patients with OCC, and substance users can help them improve their health and live longer. Lastly, further studies should be done on HIV positive adult patients by considering other important independent variables that were not included in this study.