Patient-reported outcomes among people living with HIV on single- versus multi-tablet regimens

Background: Single-tablet regimens (STR) have become the golden standard in antiretroviral therapy. However, there are calls to reintroduce (generic) components as multi-tablet regimens (MTR) because of cost-savings. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROs) are an important touchstone to support or to renounce this proposal. As such, our aim was to compare PROs of people living with HIV taking an STR versus a MTR in a real world setting.

Materials and methods: 188 people living with HIV participated in a longitudinal study. 132 remained on their MTR and 56 switched to an STR. At baseline, months 1-3-6-12-18 and 24, participants filled in questionnaires on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), depressive symptoms, HIV symptoms, neurocognitive complaints (NCC) treatment satisfaction and adherence. Generalized linear mixed models and generalized estimation equations mixed models were built.

Results: At baseline, the two groups did not differ in clinical parameters and PROs. The mix...