Treatment outcomes among HIV-1 and HIV-2 infected children initiating antiretroviral therapy in a concentrated low prevalence setting in West Africa

BACKGROUND: There is little data on responses to combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) among HIV-infected children in the West African region. We describe treatment outcomes among HIV-1 and HIV-2 infected children initiating cART in a research clinic in The Gambia, West Africa. METHODS: All treatment naive HIV-infected children who initiated cART according to the WHO ART guidelines for children between October 2004 and December 2009 were included in the analysis. Kaplan-Meir estimates and sign-rank test were used to investigate the responses to treatment. RESULTS: 65 HIV-1 and five HIV-2 infected children aged /=5 years at ART initiation were 470 cells/mm3 ((270 - 650; P = 0.0005), 230 cells/mm3 (30 - 610; P = 0.0196) and 615 cells/mm3 (250 - 1060; P = 0.0180) respectively. The proportions of children achieving undetectable HIV-1 viral load at 6-, 12-, 24- and 36 months of treatment were 24/38 (63.2%), 20/36 (55.6%), 8/22 (36.4%) and 7/12 (58.3%) respectively. The probability of survival among HIV-1 infected children after 12 months on ART was 89.9% (95% CI 78.8 - 95.3). CD4 T cell recovery was sub-optimal in all the HIV-2 infected children and none achieved virologic suppression. Two of the HIV-2 infected children died within 6 months of starting treatment while the remaining three were lost to follow-up. Conclusions: The beneficial effects of cART among HIV-1 infected children in our setting are sustained in the first 24 months of treatment with a significant improvement in survival experience up to 36 months; however the outcome was poor in the few HIV-2 infected children initiated on cART