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Studies examining the benefits of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among injection drug users (IDUs) have yielded inconsistent results. Some have made it clear that active or past drug use does not necessarily imply poor medication adherence or lower virologic success rates. Others, however, have suggested that combination ART does not confer the same dramatic survival benefits in IDUs as in other populations.
In a large, observational cohort study, researchers examined survival curves for HIV-infected individuals who began ART in British Columbia between mid-1996 and mid-2006. The 915 former or current IDUs were slightly younger than the 2201 subjects who had no history of drug use; the IDUs were also more likely to be female and to be cared fo…