Brief Report: Long-Term Follow-up of Smokers Living With HIV After an Intensive Behavioral Tobacco Treatment Intervention

INTRODUCTION Cigarette smoking is extremely common among persons living with HIV (PLWH) in the United States, and it has emerged as a leading killer in this group. No tobacco treatment studied to date has demonstrated long-term efficacy. METHODS This was a follow-up study of PLWH adult smokers who completed a randomized controlled trial of positively Smoke Free group therapy from 2014 to 2017. Participants from 2 of the 3 trial sites were recalled to complete a long-term follow-up assessment, at least one year after initial enrollment. RESULTS Of the 342 candidates for this follow-up study, 11 had died before our attempts to contact them, and 194 of the remaining 331 (58.6%) completed the late follow-up assessment. Most (91.2%) of the remaining candidates could not be contacted despite numerous attempts. At a mean of 38.1 months after initial study enrollment, using an intention-to-treat, lost to follow-up = still smoking (worst case scenario) strategy, 12.7% of group therapy vs. 6.6% of control participants had biochemically verified 7-day point-prevalence abstinence, odds ratio = 2.06 (95% CI: 0.96-4.41), P = 0.06, and 10.3% of group therapy vs. 4.2% of control participants had biochemically verified 12-month point-prevalence abstinence, odds ratio = 2.61 (95% CI: 1.05-6.47, P = 0.03). Improvements in abstinence self-efficacy in the positively Smoke Free group observed in the original study were sustained through late follow-up. CONCLUSIONS Targeted group therapy for PLWH smokers was associated with increased cessation and sustained improvements in abstinence self-efficacy at a mean of more than 3 years of follow-up. This is the first trial to show long-term efficacy of tobacco treatment for PLWH.