Revista de SIDA e investigación clínica

Clinical and Epidemiological Differences between Women and Men with HIV Infection in Mexico

Abstract

Mata-Marín José Antonio, Chaparro-Sánchez Alberto, Hernández-López Juan Carlos, Huerta-García Gloria, Domínguez-Hermosillo Juan Carlos and Cruz-Domínguez Pilar

Objective: To evaluate the differences in gender for epidemiological, immunological, and virological outcomes at baseline, and response after 24 weeks of antiretroviral therapy in patients treated at the Hospital de Infectología “La Raza” National Medical Center.

Methods: We reviewed the medical records from March to August 2014 of outpatients who started treatment in our clinic; 65 women and 138 men in a cross-sectional study. Descriptive results are summarized using the median and 25th-75th interquartile range (IQR). Baseline differences were tested using Fisher’s exact test and the Chi-squared test. Analyses of continuous variables were performed using the Mann-Whitney U test.

Results: Similar proportions of women and men were found in the following factors: living in metropolitan area, age <40 years, economic household income source, baseline CD4+ ≤ 200 cells/μL, CD4+ ≥200 cells/μL at week 24, HIV-1 RNA ≤50 copies/mL at week 24, and opportunistic infections. Women are more usually married than men (75% vs. 10%, p<0.001); men with a higher academic degree (34% vs. 9%, p<0.001); men with an onset of sexual activity <20 years (85% vs. 79%, p=0.26); women with ≤4 sexual partners (92.3% vs. 26.3%, p<0.001); women with children (92% vs. 20%, p<0.001); men with some addiction (29% vs. 10%, p=0.04); women with baseline HIV-1 RNA viral load >100,000 copies/mL (37% vs. 54%, p=0.020); and women with virological treatment failure (10.8% vs. 2.2%, p=0.008).

Conclusion: Compared with men, mostly women showed adverse epidemiological and clinical conditions that made women more vulnerable to transmission through heterosexual activity, and more frequently present virological failure.