The impact of British and US guidelines for initiating combination antiretroviral therapy on estimating national treatment requirements for HIV-positive patients

This paper uses comprehensive national data on HIV positive patients in Sco tland to carry our a needs assessment exercise for combination antiretrovir al therapy. The objective of this study was to estimate the numbers of HIV positive patients in Scotland who would be eligible for combination antiret roviral therapy under current British and US guidelines and to demonstrate the impact of these different guidelines on the resources required The prop ortion of the Scottish population that would be eligible for combination th erapy ranged from 76% to 91%, under different guidelines for initiating the rapy. We thus estimate that for countries such as Scotland, including weste rn Europe and the United States, where a large proportion of the HIV popula tion became infected in the early to mid-1980s, the majority of patients wi ll be eligible for combination therapy, regardless of the guideline.