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closeMinor error in analysis of data from interruption 1 of cohort 4, not affecting conclusions of paper
Posted by mdavenport on 24 Mar 2016 at 04:28 GMT
The data for cohort 4 was extracted from figure 1a of reference 17 (Fischer, M. et al. AIDS 17, 195–199 (2003).). This involves 14 individuals undergoing 5 sequential treatment interruptions. Data for time-to-detection after treatment interruption for cohort 4 of Pinkevych et al (displayed in figure 4b) was extracted directly from this table. Patients who had detectable virus at the time of interruption (for any given interruption) were excluded from analysis in that interruption.
Unfortunately in interruption one, patients were accidentally excluded if they had detectable HIV at the time of interruption for any of the five interruptions (instead of being excluded only if they had detectable HIV in the first interruption). Thus, instead of 14 patients that should have recorded a time-to-detection in cohort 1, six patients were wrongly excluded (patients 109, 112, 116, 125, 127, 129) and only 8 patients were included in this analysis for interruption one. In interruptions 2 to 5, patients were correctly excluded.
The inclusion of these additional six patients for interruption one alters the best estimate of frequency of reactivation for cohort four from once every 7.2 days to once every 6.3 days. We note that inclusion of interruption one for these six patients does not affect the average rate of reactivation over all patients in the four cohorts (once every 6.0 days), as this only affects one reading in 6 out of 100 patients analyzed. It also does not affect in any way the conclusions of the paper.