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The focus of clinical AIDS care has become optimization of two surrogate markers, the CD4-cell count and the viral load. But data from two recent studies suggest that other surrogate markers may be worth monitoring as well, namely the ones that reflect ongoing inflammation in the body.
Tien and colleagues studied levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen in relation to mortality risk among more than 1000 HIV-infected adults who enrolled in the FRAM study between mid-2000 and mid-2002. Five years after enrollment, high baseline levels of fibrinogen and CRP were associated with greater overall mortality risk, both in the study population as a whole and within each CD4-cell stratum, including the highest one (>500 cells/mm3). After adju…