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Among HIV-infected individuals in the U.S., the mortality rate is substantially higher in blacks than in whites, for reasons that have long been unclear. In particular, it has been a challenge to tease out biological from social factors: Does the poorer response to combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) in blacks reflect suboptimal drug-taking behavior or suboptimal physiological response to the drugs?
Researchers pooled data from five ACTG studies conducted between 1998 and 2006 that examined the effects of combination ART administered to ART-naive individuals. Overall, 1344 white and 1151 black patients were treated with various combinations of nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, a…