ObjectivesWe aimed to characterize depression in newly diagnosed HIV-infected patients, to determine the effect of antiretroviral therapy (ART) on its incidence, and to investigate whether efavirenz use was associated with a higher risk, compared with non-efavirenz-containing regimens, in the Spanish CoRIS cohort.
MethodsCoRIS is a contemporary, multicentre cohort of HIV-infected patients, antiretroviral-naïve at entry, launched in 2004. Poisson regression models were used to investigate demographic, clinical and treatment-related factors associated with a higher incidence of clinically significant depression to October 2010.
ResultsIn total, 5185 patients (13 089 person-years) participated in the study, of whom 3379 (65.2%) started ART during follow-up. The incidence rates of depression before and after starting ART were 11.68 [95% confidence interval (CI) 9.01-15.15] and 7.06 (95% CI 5.45-9.13) cases per 1000 person-years, respectively. After adjustment, there was an inverse association between the occurrence of depression and the initiation of ART [incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.53; 95% CI 0.28-0.99], while the likelihood of depression increased in patients of age > 50 years (IRR 1.94;. Longer exposure to ART was associated with a decreased IRR of depression in unadjusted and adjusted analyses. The IRR for patients receiving < 2, 2-4 and > 4 years of ART was 0.72 (95% CI 0.36-1.44), 0.10 (95% CI 0.04-0.25) and 0.05 (95% CI 0.01-0.17), respectively, compared with ART-naïve patients. This protective effect was also observed when durations of exposure to nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimens and efavirenz-containing regimens were analysed separately.
ConclusionsThe incidence of clinically significant depression was lower among HIV-infected patients on ART. The protective effect of ART was also observed with efavirenz-containing regimens. Mood disorders may negatively affect medication adherence, disease progression and mortality in HIV-infected patients [5][6][7]. Depressive symptoms at the time of initiating combined antiretroviral therapy (ART) have been associated with slower virological suppression [8] and more rapid virological failure in patients initially responding to nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI)-based regimens [9]. A number of studies have reported significantly worse outcomes in depressed compared with nondepressed HIV-infected persons, even after adjusting for adherence [9,10].Risk factors for mood disorders in HIV-infected individuals remain largely unknown and there is limited information about the effect that ART might have on their occurrence. A few small observational studies in the early era of combined ART reported a lower prevalence of depression among persons on ART than in those not receiving ART [11], and a possible improvement in depressive symptoms during therapy with protease inhibitors (PIs) was observed [12]. However, there have been no systematic studies assessing the impact of ART on the incidence of depression.ART in persons with mood di...