In this week's PLoS Medicine, Luis Montaner from the Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, USA and colleagues retrospectively apply a potential capacity-saving CD4 count model to a cohort of HIV-infected patients on antiretroviral therapy. The study's findings suggest that the model could be used to optimize laboratory capacity in settings where resources are limited. The authors stress that the method is not intended to replace CD4 count testing or establish a second tier of healthcare, rather the model is intended as a triage tool to prioritize laboratory capacity for patients who are a high priority.
The authors state: "the implementation of our method could help focus laboratory-based CD4 count testing capacity on patients with higher likelihood of CD4 failure. This work provides the basis for future prospective testing of the model's overall safety, cost effectiveness and clinical outcomes in low-resource settings."
Funding: This work was partially supported by: NIH/NIAID grant UO1AI51986 to LJM and NIH/NIAID grant RO1 HL107196 to ASF. Additional support was provided by The Philadelphia Foundation (Robert I. Jacobs Fund), The Stengel-Miller family, AIDS funds from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and from the Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement Program, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and Cancer Center Grant (P30 CA10815). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Azzoni L, Foulkes AS, Liu Y, Li X, Johnson M, et al. (2012) Prioritizing CD4 Count Monitoring in Response to ART in Resource-Constrained Settings: A Retrospective Application of Prediction-Based Classification. PLoS Med 9(4): e1001207.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001207
CONTACT:
Luis Montaner
Wistar Institute
Immunology
3601 Spruce St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
UNITED STATES
(215) 898-9143
montaner@wistar.org
Everything published by PLoS Medicine is Open Access: freely available for anyone to read, download, redistribute and otherwise use, as long as the authorship is properly attributed.
Please mention PLoS Medicine in your report and use the links below to take your readers straight to the online articles:
For information about PLoS Medicine relevant to journalists, bloggers and press officers, including an outline of our approach to the media, our embargo policy, and how you can re-use PLoS Medicine material, see the Speaking of Medicine blog: http://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/media/
Journal
PLoS Medicine