Viremia Copy-Years Predicts Mortality Among Treatment-Naive HIV-Infected Patients Initiating Antiretroviral Therapy

Abstract

Background. Cross-sectional plasma human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) viral load (VL) measures have proven invaluable for clinical and research purposes. However, cross-sectional VL measures fail to capture cumulative plasma HIV burden longitudinally. We evaluated the cumulative effect of exposure to HIV replication on mortality following initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART)