Antiretroviral Treatment Scale-Up and Tuberculosis Mortality in High TB/HIV Burden Countries: An Econometric Analysis

Introduction: Antiretroviral therapy (ART) reduces mortality in patients with active tuberculosis (TB), but the population-level relationship between ART coverage and TB mortality is untested. We estimated the reduction in population-level TB mortality that can be attributed to increasing ART coverage across 41 high HIV-TB burden countries. Methods: We compiled TB mortality trends between 1996 and 2011 from two sources: (1) national program-reported TB death notifications, adjusted for annual TB case detection rates, and (2) WHO TB mortality estimates. National coverage with ART, as proportion of HIV-infected people in need, was obtained from UNAIDS. We applied panel linear regressions controlling for HIV prevalence (5-year lagged), coverage of TB interventions (estimated by WHO and UNAIDS), gross domestic product per capita, health spending from domestic sources, urbanization, and country fixed effects. Results: Models suggest that that increasing ART coverage was followed by reduced TB mortality, across multiple specifications. For death notifications at 2 to 5 years following a given ART scale-up, a 1% increase in ART coverage predicted 0.95% faster mortality rate decline (p = 0.002); resulting in 27% fewer TB deaths in 2011 alone than would have occurred without ART. Based on WHO death estimates, a 1% increase in ART predicted a 1.0% reduced TB death rate (p