Long‐term methadone treatment: effect on CD4+ lymphocyte counts and HIV‐1 plasma RNA level in patients with HIV infection

The objective was to examine the effect of methadone on CD4+ lymphocyte counts and viral load and to expect to document the safety of methadone maintenance in patients with human immune deficiency syndrome. This is a retrospective chart analysis comparing the trends in CD4+ count and viral load in two populations of 21 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected patients, one on methadone maintenance and a methadone non‐using group. Each methadone user was matched with a control methadone non‐user that had a similar CD4+ at the beginning of the study. For the CD4+ count we compared the slope of regression for each couple of patients. In 15 patients we also collected the viral load, which was measured at 4–6 monthly intervals. The mean length of follow‐up was 811 days for the methadone group and 797 days in the control group. There was no statistical difference in the treatment received by the two groups of patients during the study. The slope of regression of CD4+ count showed a significantly steeper decline in the methadone‐using patients compared with the methadone non‐users ( r = 0.487; p < 0.05). The evolution of the HIV‐1 RNA levels was the same during the follow‐up of mean 186 months in a few of the patients in each of the two groups. Long‐term methadone use was associated with a significantly faster decrease of CD4+ count in HIV‐1 affected patients compared with methadone non‐users. HIV‐1 RNA data were found in too few patients to enable any conclusions about the development of viral load in the two groups.