RESUMO
BACKGROUND: There is a common belief that injecting drug use (IDU) is associated with lower uptake, retention and success of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients. We examined this in an Indonesian setting, where IDU is the main risk factor for HIV infection. METHODS: Patient characteristics and response to ART were recorded for all patients diagnosed with HIV infection in the referral hospital for West Java (40 million people). Kaplan-Meier estimates and Cox's regression were used to compare mortality, loss to follow-up and virological failure between patients with and without a history of IDU. RESULT: A total of 773 adult HIV patients (81.9% IDUs) presented between January 1996 and April 2008. IDUs had a median CD4 cell count of 33 [interquartile ratio (IQR), 12-111] cells/mm(3) compared to 84 (IQR, 28-224) cells/mm(3) in non-IDUs. Among patients with a history of IDU, 87.7% were coinfected with hepatitis C (HCV). Mortality was associated strongly with CD4 count; after 6 months of ART, 18.3, 20.3, 7.1 and 0.7% of patients with CD4 cell counts <25, 25-99, 100-199, respectively, > or =200/mm(3) had died (P < 0.0001). Mortality [adjusted for CD4; hazard ratio (HR) = 0.65; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.35-1.23], loss to follow-up (HR = 0.85, 95% CI 0.51-1.41) and virological failure (HR = 0.47, 95% CI 0.19-1.13) were not significantly different in IDUs and non-IDUs. CONCLUSION: Intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Indonesia with HIV/acquired immune deficiency syndrome tend to have more advanced disease but respond similarly to non-IDUs to antiretroviral therapy.