The HIV-CAUSAL Collaboration comprises 12 prospective cohort studies from five European countries and the United States. All cohorts in the collaboration are based on data collected for clinical purposes within national health care systems with essentially no barriers to access. The individual cohort studies are UK CHIC (United Kingdom),21 (link) ATHENA (Netherlands),22 (link) FHDH-ANRS CO4 (France),23 (link) SHCS (Switzerland),24 (link) PISCIS (Spain),25 (link) CoRIS/CoRIS-MD26 (link), 27 (link) (Spain), VACS-VC (United States veterans),28 (link) UK Register of HIV Seroconverters29 (link) (United Kingdom), ANRS PRIMO (France),30 (link) ANRS SEROCO (France),31 (link) and GEMES (Spain).15 (link),32 (link) The last four studies include individuals for whom it was possible to estimate the time of HIV seroconversion (known as seroconverters). Individuals participating in both FHDH-ANRS CO4 and ANRS PRIMO/SEROCO were removed from FHDH-ANRS CO4, those in both CoRIS and PISCIS were removed from CoRIS, and those in UK CHIC and the UK Register of HIV Seroconverters were removed from UK CHIC. See the Appendix for a description of each individual cohort.
The date of start of follow-up was cohort-specific and ranged from January of 1996 to January of 1998. Our analyses were restricted to HIV-1-infected individuals that met the following criteria at the start of follow-up: age 18 years or older, antiretroviral therapy-naive, no history of AIDS (defined as the onset of any Category C AIDS-defining illness33 ), no pregnancy (when information was available), HIV-RNA >500 copies/mL (in cohorts in which it could not be confirmed that the patient was therapy-naive), and CD4 cell count and HIV-RNA measurements within 6 months of each other. For each patient, follow-up ended at death, 12 months after the most recent lab measurement, pregnancy (if known), or the cohort-specific administrative end of follow-up (ranging between December 2003 and September 2007), whichever occurred earlier.
cART initiation was defined as the date at which a patient initiated treatment with either three or more antiretroviral drugs, or two ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors, or one non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor plus one boosted protease inhibitor. The date of death was identified independently by the cohorts using a combination of national and local mortality registries and clinical records (see Appendix for details).
The date of start of follow-up was cohort-specific and ranged from January of 1996 to January of 1998. Our analyses were restricted to HIV-1-infected individuals that met the following criteria at the start of follow-up: age 18 years or older, antiretroviral therapy-naive, no history of AIDS (defined as the onset of any Category C AIDS-defining illness33 ), no pregnancy (when information was available), HIV-RNA >500 copies/mL (in cohorts in which it could not be confirmed that the patient was therapy-naive), and CD4 cell count and HIV-RNA measurements within 6 months of each other. For each patient, follow-up ended at death, 12 months after the most recent lab measurement, pregnancy (if known), or the cohort-specific administrative end of follow-up (ranging between December 2003 and September 2007), whichever occurred earlier.
cART initiation was defined as the date at which a patient initiated treatment with either three or more antiretroviral drugs, or two ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors, or one non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor plus one boosted protease inhibitor. The date of death was identified independently by the cohorts using a combination of national and local mortality registries and clinical records (see Appendix for details).
