Association of raltegravir use with long-term health outcomes in HIV-infected patients: an observational post-licensure safety study in a large integrated healthcare system

Abstract

Background: Raltegravir became the first integrase inhibitor to gain FDA approval; but with limited evidence documenting long-term risks in real world care, especially for major health outcomes of interest.

Objective: Assess raltegravir safety in clinical practice within an integrated health system.

Methods: We conducted a cohort study of HIV-infected adults within Kaiser Permanente California from 2005 to 2013. We compared patients initiating raltegravir during the study period with two groups; a historical cohort (started new antiretroviral regimen [ART] 2005–2007) and a concurrent cohort that did not initiate raltegravir (2007–2013). We used multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression to obtain hazard ratios (HR) for pre-specified incident health outcomes, employing propensity scores to adjust for potential confounding.

Results: The population included 8,219 HIV-infected adults (raltegravir cohort N = 1,757; 4,798 patient-years), with greater years known HIV-infected among raltegravir patients. The raltegravir cohort had increased HR for AIDS-defining (HR 2.69 [1.53–4.71]; HR 1.85 [1.21–2.82]) and non-AIDS-defining malignancies (HR 2.26 [1.29–3.94]; HR 1.88 [1.26–2.78]) relative to both comparison cohorts. Compared to the historical cohort we found no significant difference in all-cause mortality; the raltegravir cohort experienced increased HR for all-cause mortality compared to concurrent (HR 1.53 [1.02–2.31]). Raltegravir appeared protective of lipodystrophy when compared to the historical cohort but associated with increased incidence compared to concurrent. There were no significant differences in the incidence of hepatic, skin, or cardiovascular events.

Conclusions: The potentially elevated risk for malignancy and mortality with raltegravir and residual confounding merits further investigation. We demonstrate the value of observational cohorts for monitoring post-licensure medication safety.

Keywords:

• Raltegravir
• observational treatment comparison
• drug safety
• propensity scores

Disclosure statement

None of the authors had any personal financial ties or investment with Merck & Co. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded through a research contract and grant from Merck & Co., Inc. The funder offered editorial input but all content decisions are those of the authors.