Better adherence, higher QoL and patients’ preferences

are all key points which may combine to assure long-lasting efficacy of cART. STR and Cost-Effectiveness Adherence is strictly correlated to hospitalization, as demonstrated in different studies. Completely adherent patients are less likely to be hospitalized or to require emergency room care than non-adherent patients [22]. Patients who achieve a 95% adherence threshold have a significantly lower rate of hospitalization compared with patients who are non-adherent to therapy, regardless of their pill burden. Furthermore, patients who received a single pill per day were shown to be significantly less likely to be hospitalized than patients who received three or more pills per day [38]. In the COMPACT study [27], the type of therapy also influenced the total cost of illness. Patients treated with a STR showed Silmitasertib datasheet association

with the lowest cost. A selective non-adherence in a MPR of 3.5% increased the risk of hospitalization by 39% thus further increasing management costs. Patients on a STR have been associated with significantly lower monthly health care cost (US $605 per patient per month) (p < 0.001) compared to patients on MPR. Differences were even greater (US $922 per patient) (p < 0.001) when only treatment-naïve patients were examined. The use of OD STRs was associated with a 17% reduction in total health care costs, partly due to the significant reduction of hospitalization

costs [23]. As already pointed out, cohort analyses have a few limitations and these results must be evaluated A-769662 mw with caution as selection biases could play a role in the final outcome. As an example, patients with a lower CD4 nadir could have preferentially received a MPR and as the CD4 nadir is related to the risk of AEs and development of opportunistic pathologies their health care costs would naturally be higher. However, these concerns are somehow tempered by the consistency of results among different cohorts [23, 27]. The economic value of the switch from a two-pills-a-day TDF/FTC + EFV therapy to a STR (TDF/FTC/EFV) was evaluated by means of incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). The STR was the most Bupivacaine cost-effective treatment strategy, with an ICER of €22,017 vs. €26,558 for the two-pills-a-day regimen [19]. Besides improving adherence and QoL as perceived by the patients, STRs allowed a 17% reduction of costs, corresponding to a € 4,541 lower cost-effectiveness ratio per quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) [39]. Similarly, the SPIRIT study showed that the use of the STR TDF/FTC/RPV was associated with an overall 16% cost reduction per subject through 24 weeks [6]. Current STRs Three STRs are currently available. TDF/FTC/EFV is a STR containing 300 mg of TDF, 200 mg of FTC and 600 mg of EFV.