An effort to drive up the rate of full suppression of HIV through a texting-based intervention called Connect4Care failed in a recent yearlong study, Infectious Disease Advisor reports.

Publishing their findings in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers recruited 230 people with HIV and randomly assigned them to one of two groups. A total of 116 of them received three text messages weekly, and 114 of them did not.

All participants received a reminder text 48 hours before a primary care appointment, a monthly text message asking them to confirm their participation in the study and check-in phone calls three and nine months into the study.

Twelve months into the study, 48.8 percent of those who received the texting intervention and 45.8 percent of those who did not had a fully suppressed viral load. The difference between these figures was not statistically significant, meaning it could have been driven by chance. At the six- and 12-month marks in the study, any change in the rate of viral suppression from the baseline point was negligible in each group.

The texting intervention also did not affect the proportion of participants who stayed in medical care for the virus.

However, there was evidence that those who engaged more with the study text messages were more likely to do well on HIV treatment.

To read the Infectious Disease Advisor article, click here.

To read the study, click here.