Hair can predict success of HIV treatment: Researchers

New York, March 10: Hair strands can help detect the levels of antiretroviral drugs in HIVdefine patients to assess the success of the ongoing treatment, say U.S. researchers.

Until now, the extremely patient-dependent ways remain very uncertain in predicting how well a patient is doing with the treatment. Either the doctors depend on pill-count or patient's self-evaluation or some pricey methods, including drug dispensers, to monitor their treatment progress.

A team of researchers from California University, headed by Monica Gandhi, an Indian-origin scientist, have found that the hair of patients undergoing treatment indicated levels of antiretrovirals that have a connection with HIVdefine virus levels in their blood.

"This is a painless, bloodless, biohazard-free, method of collecting a stable specimen from HIV patients that may allow for the monitoring of levels of antiretroviral drugs absorbed over time and the prediction of treatment success," said Gandhi, who is an assistant professor of medicine at UCSF's Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital.

The study, whose findings are published in latest issue of 'The AIDS' journal, explains that hair strands indicate drug levels which may suggest the amount of pills consumed by the patients for number of weeks, and not just days.

According to the researchers, results obtained from a single plasmadefine screening just give a "snapshot" of drug levels circulating in the blood whereas levels observed over a period of time are more dependable and can help monitor the patient's progress and response towards medication.

"Clinicians can draw blood and then measure plasma levels of medications, but since a single plasma level represents medication exposure hours prior to the blood draw, this method hasn't been a good predictor of viral suppression," said Gandhi.

"High levels of antiretrovirals in hair correlated with success in HIV viral suppression in treatment and did so better than any of the other variables usually considered to predict response," she added.

The scientists focused on 10 strands of hair from HIV patients undergoing treatments. The strands were cut close to the scalp just below the top layer and the portion farthest from the scalp were marked with a measuring tape. The strands, wrapped in aluminium foil, were preserved at room temperature in plastic bag till investigations began.

According to Ms. Gandhi, "Our next step is to test this method in resource-limited settings where blood collection and viral load monitoring may be expensive and difficult. Not only could this method help in measuring pill-taking, but its strong correlation with viral suppression could allow its use as an inexpensive, non-invasive method of monitoring treatment success."

Researcher colleague, Ruth M. Greenblatt, said, "Hair sampling for antiretroviral levels could become a new standard to look at how much drug a patient is getting -- an equivalent in HIV clinical care of measuring hemoglobin A1C, the method used in diabetes to monitor average blood glucose levels."