Hepatotoxicity in HIV Patients, An Observational Study in Patients from Tertiary Care Centre of Western India.

OBJECTIVE HIV AIDS has currently become a chronic manageable condition with HAART, but with its chronicity and lifelong therapy currently the adverse drug reactions to these drugs are the main concern for any treating physician. Hepatotoxicity is one of the prime concerns of any physician managing HIV patients. We observe a number of patients reporting hepatotoxicity in our cohort and this had great impact on the efficacy and intake of the HAART drugs, this led us to explore this area and to find out the prevalence and etiologies in our cohort. METHODS Thus we conducted this observational study to determine the prevalence of hepatotoxicity, the various etiologies for hepatotoxicity and assess HAART as the etiology of hepatotoxicity .The study was conducted in the virology department after obtaining ethics committee approval and incompliance with ICH, GCP guidelines. The study was conducted over a span of 3 months and data was collected and analyzed. RESULTS Data of 178 Subjects was considered for evaluation of which 10 were excluded due to incomplete information. 168 patients with hepatotoxicity were assessed in the study, the prevalence of hepatotoxicity in our cohort was around 2.25%. Of the 168 patients 111 were male and 57 were female.52 patients were on Antituberculosis therapy (ATT) and thus 30.95% was the incidence rate of hepatotoxicity due to ATT. 23.80% (40 out of 168) were alcoholic and hence it was the etiological agent. HAART as the etiology was observed in 5 patients,2.97%being the incidence .Hepatitis B as the causative agent for hepatotoxicity was observed in 3.57% patients. CONCLUSIONS We thus concluded that ATT and alcoholism are major areas of concern in HIV patients and thus a strict monitoring is warranted while prescribing ATT at the same time deaddiction is equally important. HAART induced hepatotoxicity is observed only in a small section of patients and thus these drugs need not be attributed as culprits blindly and put to disrepute.