HIV treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa should routinely report mortality rates among patients who remain in the programs and those patients lost to follow-up, according to a study by Matthias Egger and colleagues from the International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS in East Africa, Western Africa, and Southern Africa that is published in this week's PLoS Medicine. As a substantial proportion of patients in HIV treatment programs are lost to follow-up, mortality estimates for patients in these programs can be severely underestimated, so this bias needs to be taken into account when comparing the effectiveness of different programs.
The authors arrived at these conclusions by developing a nomogram (calculator) that corrects mortality estimates for loss to follow-up, based on the fact that mortality of all patients starting antiretroviral therapy in an HIV treatment program is a weighted average of mortality among patients lost to follow-up and patients remaining in care.
In an accompanying Perspective, Gregory Bisson from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (not involved in the research) comments that "currently we know little about the biology and behaviors that underlie loss to follow-up, but with 5.2 million people on [antiretroviral therapy], and more starting soon as a result of the 2010 WHO guidelines recommending HIV treatment earlier during disease progression, a greater understanding of loss to follow-up in its various forms is needed in order to keep the HIV treatment effort on track." He adds, "by addressing the effects of loss to follow-up on programmatic mortality estimates, and by providing monitoring efforts with a useful new tool, Egger and colleagues have helped address this need."
Funding: This study was supported by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID, grants U01-AI069924, U01-AI069911, U01-AI069919); Office of AIDS Research of the National Institutes of Health; the Agence Nationale de Recherches sur le SIDA et les Hepatites Virales (ANRS), France; and the Swiss National Science Foundation. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Egger M, Spycher BD, Sidle J, Weigel R, Geng EH, et al. (2011) Correcting Mortality for Loss to Follow-Up: A Nomogram Applied to Antiretroviral Treatment Programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. PLoS Med 8(1): e1000390. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000390
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000390
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-08-01-egger.pdf
CONTACT:
Matthias Egger
University of Berne
Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine
Finkenhubelweg 11
Bern, Bern 3012
Switzerland
+41 31 631 3501
+41 31 631 3520 (fax)
egger@ispm.unibe.ch
Perspective by Gregory Bisson
Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Bisson GP (2011) A Simple Novel Method for Determining Mortality Rates in HIV Treatment Programs Worldwide. PLoS Med 8(1): e1000392. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000392
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000392
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: www.plos.org/press/plme-08-01-bisson.pdf
CONTACT:
Gregory P.Bisson
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Department of Medicine and Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
832 Blockley Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States of America
+1 215 573 5811
+1 215 573 5315 (fax)
bisson@mail.med.upenn.edu
Journal
PLoS Medicine