Prevalence of and risk for gastrointestinal bleeding and peptic ulcerative disorders in a cohort of HIV patients from a U.S. healthcare claims database

The primary study objectives were to estimate the frequencies and rates of gastrointestinal bleeding and peptic ulcerative disorder in HIV-positive patients compared with age- and sex-matched HIV-negative subjects. Data from a US insurance claims database was used for this analysis. Among 89,207 patients with HIV, 9.0% had a GI bleed, 1.0% had an upper gastrointestinal bleed, 5.6% had a lower gastrointestinal bleed, 1.9% had a peptic ulcerative disorder diagnosis, and 0.6% had both gastrointestinal/peptic ulcerative disorder. Among 267,615 HIV-negative subjects, the respective frequencies were 6.9%, 0.6%, 4.3%, 1.4%, and 0.4% (p<0.0001 for each diagnosis subcategory). After combining effect measure modifiers into comedication and comorbidity strata, gastrointestinal bleeding hazard ratios (HRs) were higher for HIV-positive patients without comedication/comorbidity, and those with comedication alone (HR, 2.73; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.62-2.84; HR, 1.59; 95% CI, 1.47-1.71). The rate of peptic ulcerative disorder among those without a history of ulcers and no comorbidity/comedication was also elevated (HR, 2.72; 95% CI, 2.48-2.99). Hazard ratios of gastrointestinal bleeding, and peptic ulcerative disorder without a history of ulcers were lower among patients infected with HIV with comedication/comorbidity (HR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.56-0.73; HR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.33-0.65). Rates of gastrointestinal bleeding plus peptic ulcerative disorder followed a similar pattern. In summary, the rates of gastrointestinal/peptic ulcerative disorder events comparing HIV-infected subjects to non-HIV-infected subjects were differential based on comorbidity and comedication status.