Presentation synopsis:
The challenges of attributing a death to HIV
Prior to effective antiretroviral therapy (ART), survival among those diagnosed with HIV was generally short, with the majority of deaths seen being due to an AIDS condition. However, AIDS events are now relatively uncommon in those diagnosed with HIV, particularly among those who are diagnosed and start treatment soon after infection. As a result, the deaths that do occur are increasingly due to non-AIDS causes, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. Whilst these causes of death are also common in those without HIV, it is difficult to exclude the possibility that HIV may still have contributed to these deaths. In this talk, I will review the way that the classification of deaths, and their attribution to HIV, has changed over time, discussing some of the challenges faced when attempting to label a death as ‘HIV-related’.
Speaker biography:
Caroline Sabin, University College London, United Kingdom
Caroline Sabin is Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at UCL and is the Director of the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Blood-Borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections at UCL. She is also the current vice-chair of BHIVA. Caroline’s current interests are in describing the responses and adverse events to ART, and in describing the co-morbidities associated with HIV infection as people living with HIV age. She established the UK CHIC Study, was the principal statistician and co-lead for the D:A:D Study, and is the co-principal investigator for the POPPY study, a large cohort set up to investigate the associations of ageing and HIV in the UK and Ireland.
