Abstract
The acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) Is caused by a retrovirus, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A rapid and convenient method to Identify additional cofactors or risk modifiers and markers of disease progression is to study a cohort prevalent with HIV antibody. However, because the time of viral infection is usually unknown in the cohort, there are several potential sources of bias. Three sources of bias in a prevalent cohort study are identified assuming a proportional hazards model: onset confounding, differential length-biased sampling, and frailty selection. A number of problems In the interpretation of results on markers from a prevalent cohort also are considered. It is concluded that risk estimates derived from a prevalent cohort are not directly comparable to risk estimates derived from an Incident cohort.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 14-24 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | American journal of epidemiology |
Volume | 126 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1987 |
Keywords
- Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
- Biometry
- Epidemiologic methods
- Follow-up studies
- Human immunodeficiency viruses
- Prevalence studies
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Epidemiology