LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF CD4 COUNT OF HIV/AIDS PATIENTS ON ANTIRETROVIRAL THERAPY AT THE BUILSA DISTRICT HOSPITAL

Abstract

We obtained secondary data from the HIV/AIDS Monitoring Program at the Builsa District hospital, in which HIV patients were enrolled and their CD4 cell counts were being regularly monitored and thus generating repeated measures of CD4 counts. We could not tell whether patients on treatment increases or decreases in CD4 counts over time. The study was to investigate whether treatment and some social-economic factors influenced patients CD4 count after a period of treatment. Profile analysis was used to study the pattern of change in the CD4 count. Mixed effects modeling approach was also used for modeling the CD4 counts of the patients and to describe the relationship between CD4 count and duration of treatment. The results showed that, the correlation between CD4 count and time of treatment followed a first order autoregressive moving average variance-covariance structure. Parallelism and equality of profiles were achieved for gender and marital status but flatness was not proven. The trend of CD4 count over time was logarithmic indicating that the effectiveness of treatment, decreased with time. The Initial CD4 count of a patient, the duration of treatment and the drug type used in the treatment, were the factors that significantly affected the patients on ARTs current CD4 count.