note

In each of the provided figures, we display the rate of change using the following formula:
Rate (CD4/RNA) = (CD4/RNA after treatment (i,t+1) - CD4/RNA (i,t)) / (date (i, t+1)-date(i,t) )
In the above equation, i represents the level of treatment (i=1,2, and 3 for the first, second, and third line treatment) and t represent the time period where date (in days) of the i treatment is considered. For example, if the base CD4 value before the use of the first-line treatment is 500 copies/ml , and after 30 days of using the first line treatment the CD4 count increases to 600 copies/ml, we calculate the rate of CD4 change for the first line treatment as (600-500)/30. The red dots in each graph represent the mean rate of change of the selected treatment whenever it is used in the i level.  The x-axis in each of the following graphs represents the rate of change and the y-axis represents the name of the first, second, or third line treatment. In the CD4 case, the higher the rate of change the better the treatment. For example, the first line CD4 rate of change graph shows that the combination of "Kaletra + Truvada" performed better than other medications in increasing the CD4 count. This is followed by Atripla, etc. In case of RNA rate of change, the best treatments are those that are able to produce the maximum RNA suppression.  Please use our drug efficacy link to investigate the efficacy of different treatments that may be caused by drug resistance, drug toxicities, and drug tolerability. It is important to note also that treatment failure can be due to other factors (such as adherence).