TDNet Discover

Background: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a devastating and incurable disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Since the introduction of antiretroviral therapy (ART), epidemiological studies have shown a significant decrease in the morbidity and mortality within the HIV-infected population. Despite the great advances and benefits, adherence to ART remains suboptimal in the infected population. Depression is one of the most reported comorbidities in the HIV-infected population. It is important to examine the role depression plays in non-adherence to ART therapy and determine if treating the comorbid depression with antidepressant medication improves clinical outcomes. Objective: To determine the effect of treatment with antidepressants on adherence to ART in depressed HIV patients. Methods: The database EBSCOhost was used to search for studies relating to the clinical question on February 26, 2018. Search terms and phrases included: “HIV AND depression”, “antiretroviral therapy adherence AND antidepressants”, “NOT TI review”, and “NOT TI meta-analysis”. The returned results were limited to the most recent 10 years and only peer-reviewed sources in academic journals with the full text available. Results: This resulted in a total of 38 articles;three of which were chosen to use in our study. Conclusions: The three studies analyzed demonstrated that although there were inconsistencies and results were difficult to generalize, the majority of the literature supports the use of antidepressants to improve ART adherence in the general population. The analysis identified a great need for further randomized control trials before a valuable systematic literature review can be done.