Publications

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) strongly inhibits HIV replication. However, many patients show suboptimal immune recovery (SIR), as defined by virological suppression (i.e. low viral load) with a CD4+ T-cell count of ? 200 cells/mm3, after HAART initiation. Here, we performed a systematic evaluation of the SIR prevalence among HIV-infected patients in cohort studies. We searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, CNKI, Wanfang database, and Chinese Biomedicine Database for cohort studies about HIV-infected participants whose CD4+ T-cell count was ? 200 cells/mm3 but still had virological suppression after HAART initiation. The SIR prevalence from each of those cohort studies was pooled into a random-effect meta-analysis. We obtained two kinds of pooled post-HARRT initiation SIR prevalence: one among participants with virological suppression (11 cohort studies involving 18,672 participants), and the other among all HIV-infected participants (seven cohort studies involving 12,063 participants). The pooled SIR prevalence among HIV-infected patients with virological suppression after HAART initiation was 43% (95% confidence interval [CI], 34-51%) at 6 months post-HAART initiation and 10% (95% CI, 5-18%) at 36 months post-HAART initiation; among all HIV-infected patients after HAART initiation, it was 17% (95% CI, 0-55%) and 5% (95% CI, 2-10%) at 6 and 36 months post-HAART initiation, respectively. The SIR prevalence among HIV-infected patients is high at 6 months post-HAART initiation, but its prevalence gradually reduces over time under continuous HAART. Thus, it is important to follow-up on variations in the CD4+ T-cell count and viral load.

This study assesses differences mortality patterns and relative hazard due to fatal occupational injuries between native and immigrant workers in the US. Fatal occupational injury data from 2003 to 2010 were examined using survival analysis based on proportional hazards models controlling for categorical variables of race, gender, occupation, and industry. Workers are stratified based on whether they are native to the US (n = 31952) or born abroad (n = 7096). Foreign-born workers are further stratified into region of birth. Foreign-born workers had an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.148 (95 % CI 1.109:1.189) relative to native workers. Stratifying foreign-born workers into region of origin revealed significantly higher adjusted risk of work fatality relative to native workers for most foreign regions. Of fatally injured workers, foreign-born workers have shorter survival before succumbing to traumatic injury during their time of occupational ‘exposure’ in the workforce. Native-born workers tend to incur fatal injuries at older ages after longer ‘exposure’.