TITLE:
Acute-to-Chronic Ratio as a Metric for HIV Surveillance
AUTHORS:
Zonghui Hu, Dean A. Follmann
KEYWORDS:
Acute Infection; Chronic Infection; HIV; Maximum Likelihood
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Statistics,
Vol.4 No.2,
February
26,
2014
ABSTRACT: Early diagnosis is
important for HIV control on both the individual and the population level.
Patients who are diagnosed shortly after infection have more treatment options
which can result in delayed progression to AIDS. Early diagnosis can also help
to reduce the spread of HIV: with viral loads at the highest level, the newly
infected have the highest risk of transmitting HIV to partners. Accordingly it
is important to evaluate at a population level whether individuals are
diagnosed shortly after infection. For this purpose, we introduce the acute-tochronic ratio, which is the odds of the
infected individuals being diagnosed in the acute infection stage versus the
chronic infection stage among those who seek HIV testing. We demonstrate this
new metric through HIV testing results from sexually transmitted disease
clinics of four cities, and compare the four populations with respect to how
quickly the infected get HIV testing.