A Second Look at the Association between Gender and Mortality on Antiretroviral Therapy

We assessed the association between gender and mortality on antiretroviral therapy (ART) using identical models with and without sex-specific categories for weight and hemoglobin.

Setting: GHESKIO Clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Participants: 4,717 ART-naïve adult patients consecutively enrolled on ART at GHESKIO from 2003 to 2008.

Mortality on ART; multivariable analyses were conducted with and without sex-specific categories for weight and hemoglobin.

In Haiti, male gender was associated with mortality (OR 1.61; 95% CI: 1.30–2.00) in multivariable analyses with hemoglobin and weight included as control variables, but not when sex-specific interactions with hemoglobin and weight were used.

If sex-specific categories are omitted, multivariable analyses indicate a higher risk of mortality for males vs. females of the same weight and hemoglobin. However, because males have higher normal values for weight and hemoglobin, the males in this comparison would generally have poorer health status than the females. This may explain why gender differences in mortality are sometimes observed after controlling for differences in baseline variables when gender-specific interactions with weight and hemoglobin are omitted.

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/38Evfi

By:  

Serena P. Koenig, Karine Severe, Patrice Severe, Patrice Joseph, Adias Marcelin, Dgndy Alexandre Bright, Jean William Pape

Haitian Study Group for Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO), Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Serena P. Koenig

Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States of America

Alexandra Bornstein, Ngoc Pham, Pierre Cremieux

Analysis Group, Boston, MA, United States of America

Elizabeth Fox

Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States of America

Jessy G. Dévieux

AIDS Prevention Program, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States of America

Jean William Pape

Center for Global Health, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, United States of America

 

More at:  https://twitter.com/hiv_insight

And: http://twitter.com/Prison_Health