Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Vandormael AM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4767659 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Vandormael Alain M AM Boulware David R DR Tanser Frank C FC Bärnighausen Till W TW Stott Katharine E KE de Oliveira Tulio T
Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) 20160401 4
CD4 count testing is perceived to be an affordable strategy to diagnose treatment failure on first-line antiretroviral therapy. We hypothesize that the superior accuracy of viral load (VL) testing will result in less patients being incorrectly switched to more expensive and toxic second-line regimens. Using data from a drug resistance cohort, we show that CD4 testing is approximately double the cost to make 1 correct regimen switch under certain diagnostic thresholds (CD4 = US $499 vs. VL = US $ ...[more]