Time to death predictors of HIV/AIDS infected patients on antiretroviral therapy in Ethiopia

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify the major risk factors, which contributed to shortened survival time to death of HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy. Six-hundred HIV patients were included from two hospitals and six health centers record from January 2003 to December 2017. Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard model were implemented. Results: From the Kaplan-Meier, log-rank test result indicated that there was a significant difference between tuberculosis comorbidity (P =.000), occupation (P =.027), and WHO clinical stage (P =.012) on the survival experience of patients at 5% statistical significance level. From the Cox regression result, the risk of death for patients who lived with tuberculosis was about 2.872-fold times higher than those patients who were negative. Most of the HIV/AIDS patients on antiretroviral therapy were died in a short period due to tuberculosis comorbidity, began with lower amount of CD4, being underweight, merchant, and being on WHO clinical stage IV.