Dr. Liao pointed out that RTI serves as a firewall between patients and the sponsor, further ensuring participant anonymity. Also, the data can be more complete. This adds value to our analyses. RTI analyzes the data as requested by the independent advisory board, which includes principal investigators at participating sites and members of the HIV community. This board also considers analysis requests from researchers not participating in the study.
All analyses use only anonymous, aggregated data.
Among patients who achieved an undetectable viral load after starting a highly active antiretroviral therapy, participants older than 50 and those younger did not have significant differences in their average increase in CD4 counts. Thus, no evidence was found to support the theory that older patients respond less well to this therapy than their younger counterparts. Analyses also showed that sequencing therapy to use Zidovudine-containing regimens before d4T regimens led to a significantly better viral load than the reversed sequence. Results such as these are presented to the board and at HIV-related conferences.