Changing direct costs of HIV treatment since the introduction of HAART in the Netherlands

Tremendous savings in hospital-based AIDS care have been reported over the first few years since HAART became widely available in 1996. However, longer term HAART may result in increasing costs, due to toxicity of antiretroviral
regimens and development of viral resistance and subsequent therapy failure. We determined whether the direct costs of HIV treatment have changed over recent years. On a population level, the per capita costs of HAART in the Netherlands have continued to decrease up to July 2003, but seemed to have
reached a nadir. Long-term use of HAART is associated with increased expenditure on inpatient hospital resources and initiation of HAART appears more expensive recently than previously reported.