Trends in HIV viral suppression

Jason Asselin gave us a comprehensive overview of ACCESS, a national registry designed to pull HIV data from primary health care, sexual health clinic and the laboratory.

• his study included patients who had viral load testing within the last 12 months
• the last VL for the year was used to allow more patients to be included
• VL testiong as part of diagnosis was excluded
• demographics: males were older, females were younger
• results
• citeria for undetectable VL was met for 71% (2009) => 87% (2014)
• porportion of patients with a high viral load decreased
• similar outcomes for M vs F
• patients <40 years old were less like to achieve VL suppression compared to older patients
• weaknesses
• does not capture patients who did not engage in health service
• ACCESS will be rolled out nationally from Jul ’16 – Jun’19
• we can look forward to more comprehensive data