Predicting Cardiovascular Disease Risk in HIV-Infected Patients: Still Room for Improvement

Accurate cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk prediction is essential to the care of HIV-infected individuals, who have an elevated risk for CVD with contributions from nontraditional HIV-related risk factors. In a U.S. cohort study, investigators assessed how well existing CVD risk prediction tools — the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Pooled Cohorts Equations (PCEs) for prediction of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk — function in HIV-infected adults, and whether including HIV-specific factors improves risk prediction.

In sex- and race-stratified analyses of 11,288 patients (82% men; >70% on antiretroviral therapy [ART]), the PCEs demonstrated adequate discrimination of MI risk overall but weak…