Effect of caregivers' depression and alcohol use on child antiretroviral adherence in South Africa.

AIDS Patient Care STDS 25(10):595-600 (2011) PMID 21470047 PMCID PMC3183652

Pediatric antiretroviral adherence is difficult to assess, and subjective measures are affected by reporting bias, which in turn may depend on psychosocial factors such as alcohol use and depression. We enrolled 56 child-caregiver dyads from Cape Town, South Africa and followed their adherence over 1 month via various methods. The Alcohol Use Disorder Inventory Tool and Beck Depression Inventory 1 were used to assess these factors and their affect on pediatric adherence. The median age of the children was 4 years, and median time on antiretrovirals was 20 months. Increased time on ART was associated with poorer adherence via 3-day recall (3DR; p=0.03). Ethanol use was inversely associated with adherence by both subjective measures, 3DR and visual analogue scale (VAS) (both p