14th International AIDS Conference Barcelona, Spain — July 7-12, 2002

Int Conf AIDS. 2002 Jul 7-12;14:Abstract No. WePeF6667

BACKGROUND: There is a general thought that HIV infected people use CT to slow progression of the disease, to provide better immunity and to reduce adverse effects of traditional therapies. However, very few studies have analyzed in a large sample of subjects the expectations towards CT.

METHODS: Anonymous questionnaires were distributed in UK, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Greece and Spain among people attending associations for fight against AIDS including, also, information on time of HAART use, presence of side effects, treatment interruption or changing drugs due to adverse event.

RESULTS: A total of 632 ever CT use entered the study: nutritional supplements (19.6%) and psychophysiological approaches (18.4%) are the CT most frequently used and almost 43% used more of two types of CT. Among the total sample of CT users, 52.9% were 36-45 years old and 34.8% aged 35 or less. Users of different types of CT showed the same distribution but homeopathy users tended to be younger. The 61.4% of subjects used CT to improve energy without difference between different types of CT used. 50.3% of CT users used it to prevent or alleviate the HAART side effects and this reason seems to be related to different types of CT used (p=0.001): 63.6% in acupuncture group, 35-40% in the other groups. 38.1% of patients used CT on suggestion of other HIV infected persons, and 32.9%used CT by yourself decision.

CONCLUSIONS: The general results of this study indicate that the most commonly used types of CT in this population were nutritional supplements and psychophysiological approach. The decision of use one type of CT respect to another seems not related to age (with exception of patients using homeopathy who were younger). In our study, half of patients expected these therapies to prevent or alleviate the HAART side effects, and among patients using acupuncture this reason is the most commonly reported.

Presenting author: Vittorio Agnoletto

1LILA, LILA, Via Rogoredo 41, 20100 Milan, Italy.

2Istituto Mario Negri, Milan, Italy.

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