Objectives: We examined the time to antiretroviral therapy (ART) use among antiretroviral naïve HIV infected injection drug users participating in a prospective cohort study in Vancouver, Canada.
Methods: Time to the initiation of ART was evaluated using Kaplan-Meier methods and Cox proportional hazards regression. The cohort was stratified based on Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal (primarily Caucasian) ethnicity.
Results: Between May 1996 and May 2003, 312 HIV-infected individuals were enrolled into the cohort. At 24 months after enrollment, the rate of ART use was 29.2% among Aboriginal participants and was 53.7% among non-Aboriginal participants (log-rank P=0.023), and lower uptake of ART persisted in multivariate analyses (relative hazard = 0.37 [95% CI: 0.15-0.93]; P = 0.035).
Conclusions: These findings demonstrate lower uptake of HIV/AIDS care among Aboriginal injection drug users and demonstrate the need for interventions to improve access to HIV care among indigenous populations.