Background: Adherence to antiretroviral (ARV) therapy remains a major challenge in HIV therapeutics.
Objective: To assess the adherence to ARV therapy by measuring the delay in monthly refilling of ARV drugs using pharmacy records and to correlate this with HIV plasma RNA measurements and CD4+ cell count.
Method: Records of 170 HIV-positive patients were examined to identify HIV viral load (VL)/CD4+ results and the time interval to refill ARVs at the pharmacy. The correlation between the number of days missed to refill ARVs and plasma HIV-RNA detectability/CD4+ count was performed using the Spearman's correlation coefficient (r).
Results: Fewer days missed to refill ARV was positively correlated with undetectable VL and increase in CD4+ count (r = 0.407 and 0.237, respectively). Increase in adherence was correlated with longer retention in the cohort (r = 0.208).
Conclusion: Monitoring the delay to pick up ARVs from the pharmacy can be an important and simple tool to identify patients requiring assessment of their adherence.
Keywords: HIV disease; ambulatory care.