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Tobacco, alcohol and use of other recreational drugs within HIV-infected treated cohorts: the IeDEA West Africa collaboration

Background

Cardiovascular diseases and cancers are an emerging problem among HIV-infected persons once Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) is used for prolonged periods of time. Tobacco and alcohol consumption are well-known risk factors of many non-AIDS classifying cancers but are poorly documented in sub-Saharan Africa. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of cancer risk behaviors classifiable as addictions (tobacco, alcohol and recreational drugs) among HAART-treated HIV-infected patients in the West African region.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in eight adult centers participating to the International epidemiological Database to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) in West Africa collaboration (five in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, two in Bamako, Mali and one in Cotonou, Benin). During a 4-week period, especially trained health workers administered to HAART-treated patients a standardized and validated questionnaire assessing current and past smoking status, alcohol drinking and use of selected recreational drugs.

Preliminary results

From May 21 to June 6, 2008, 813 HIV-infected patients on HAART participated to the first phase of this study (194 men and 619 women). In Côte d'Ivoire, 57.2 percent (95% CI +/- 6.8%) of men reported a current or a past history of smoking and 23 percent (95% CI +/- 5.8%) admitted being current smokers. Of the group, 43.1 percent (95% CI +/- 7%) declared current alcohol consumption during the last year and 56.7 percent (95% CI +/- 6.9%) declared alcohol intake before this last year. In Ivoirian women, 5.3 percent (95% CI +/- 1.7%) declared a current or a past history of smoking and 1.4 percent (95% CI +/- 0.9%) admitted being current smokers. In Ivoirian women, 24.6 percent (95% CI +/- 3.4%) declared current alcohol consumption during the last year and 37.0 percent (95% CI +/- 3.8%) declared alcohol intake before this last year. In Mali, 81.1 percent (95% CI +/- 12.4%) of men declared a current or past history of smoking, 48.6 percent (95% CI +/- 16.1%) being current smokers. Of the Mali men, 5.4 percent declared current alcohol consumption during the last year and 16 percent declared alcohol intake before this last year. In Malian women, 6.3 percent (95% CI +/- 4.6%) declared a current or past history of smoking, with 2.7 percent being current smokers. In Malian women, 3.7 percent declared current alcohol consumption during the last year and 4.3 percent declared alcohol intake before this year. The full data set will comprise data on 1,400 HAART-treated patients in Côte d'Ivoire, 600 in Mali and 400 in Benin and will be correlated with socio-demographic, clinical and therapeutic characteristics.

Discussion

This information will help 1) at the patient level to provide targeted educational support to HAART-treated patients on these addictions; 2) at the population level to provide reliable estimates of the long-term impact of such consumptions on the prognosis of these African patients.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Jaquet, A., Ekouevi, D., Bashi, J. et al. Tobacco, alcohol and use of other recreational drugs within HIV-infected treated cohorts: the IeDEA West Africa collaboration. Infect Agents Cancer 4 (Suppl 2), P24 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1186/1750-9378-4-S2-P24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1750-9378-4-S2-P24

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