Data Collection and Variables
Patients’ characteristics included age, sex, marital status, race, education, occupation, route of HIV infection, year(s) of confirmed HIV positive, year(s) when ART and second-line ART commenced, whether taken CM, CD4+ T cell count, anemia or not, liver injury or not, hyperlipidemia or not, year of death and year of censored were collected.
All the information from standard medical record registers of NFATP and NCMATP. The laboratory test such as the CD4+ T cell count, Hb, AST, ALT, TC and TG were the recorded value latest time from the beginning time of second-line ART in half year, if no value in half year, the variable was missing. Hyperlipidemia was defined as serum total cholesterol (TC) >6.20 mmol/L and/or serum triglyceride (TG) >2.30 mmol/L [17]. Common clinical criteria were adopted for liver injury, that is, AST/ALT≥50 u/L, which was defined as liver injury[18]. Hemoglobin (Hb) <120g/L in adult males and Hb<110g/L in adult females, which was defined as anemia [19].