DART trial shortlisted in The Lancets 2009 paper of the year award
24 February 2010
The Development of Anti-Retroviral Therapy in Africa (DART) clinical trial has been named as runner-up in The Lancet’s 2009 paper of the year award.
The study, published online in December 2009 and sponsored by the Medical Research Council (MRC), demonstrated that a third more people could be successfully treated for HIV in Africa if expensive laboratory tests routinely used for monitoring side effects are abandoned.
The paper came second out of eight nominations, chosen as papers that would effectively inform research, clinical practice, and health policy.
In a commentary on the publication in The Lancet, Andrew Phillips and Joep van Oosterhout congratulated the DART team for showing that, even in challenging circumstances, excellent trials with low loss to follow-up can be done in Africa.
The survival rate in the DART trial is amongst the best reported from any trial, Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) programme or study in Africa.
The DART trial began six years ago in Uganda and Zimbabwe when treatment for people with HIV was starting to become more widely available. The report concluded that ART can be delivered safely, without routine laboratory monitoring for toxic effects, but that differences in the progression of the disease suggested monitoring CD4-cell count from the second year of treatment.
Notes to editors:
For further information or to arrange an interview with any of the scientists involved in the project, please contact the MRC Press Office on 0207 670 6011 or press.office@headoffice.mrc.ac.uk
1. DART was sponsored and funded by the UK Medical Research Council. Further funding was provided by the UK Department for International Development and the Rockefeller Foundation. Antiretroviral drugs given to trial participants were donated by GlaxoSmithKline, Gilead Sciences, Abbott Laboratories and Boehringer Ingelheim. These pharmaceutical companies also provided funding for some of the sub-studies that were part of the DART trial.
2. DART Trial Team. Routine versus clinically driven laboratory monitoring of HIV antiretroviral therapy in Africa (DART): a randomised non-inferiority trial. Lancet 200910.1016/S0140-6736(09)62067-5. published online Dec 9
3. Phillips A, van Oosterhout J. DART points the way for HIV treatment programmes. Lancet 2010; 375: 96-98
4. The winning paper was from Spain, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: “Prediction of mortality and major cardiac events by exercise echocardiography in patients with normal exercise electrocardiographic testing.”
