NYMC Faculty Publications

Journal Title

PLoS One

First Page

e0195231

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2018

Department

Epidemiology and Community Health

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Loss to care is high among asymptomatic HIV-infected women initiated on antiretroviral therapy (ART) during pregnancy or in the postpartum period. However, whether pregnancy itself plays a role in the high loss to care rate is uncertain. We compared loss to care over seven years between pregnant and non-pregnant women at enrollment into HIV care in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of all ART-naive women aged 15-45 initiating HIV care at two large clinics in Kinshasa, DRC, from 2007-2013. Pregnancy status was recorded at care enrollment. Patients were classified as having no follow-up if they did not return to care after the initial enrollment visit. Among those with at least one follow-up visit after enrollment, we classified patients as lost to care if more than 365 days had passed since their last clinic visit. We used logistic regression to model the association between pregnancy status and no follow-up, and Cox proportional hazards regression to model the association between pregnancy status and time to loss to care. RESULTS: Of 2175 women included in the analysis, 1497 (68.8%) were pregnant at enrollment. Compared to non-pregnant women, pregnant women were less likely to be over 35 years of age (19.1% vs. 31.9%, p

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Publisher's Statement

Originally published in PLoS ONE, 13(4) [Article e0195231]. The original material can be found here.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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