Association between fertility and HIV status: what implications for HIV estimates?

Kongnyuy, Eugene J. and Wiysonge, C. S. (2008) 'Association between fertility and HIV status: what implications for HIV estimates?'. BMC Public Health, Vol 8, :309.

Preview

Text 1471-2458-8-309.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (256kB)

Abstract

Background: Most estimates of HIV prevalence have been based on sentinel surveillance of pregnant women which may either under-estimate or over-estimate the actual prevalence in adult female population. One situation which can lead to either an underestimate or an overestimate of the actual HIV prevalence is where there is a significant difference in fertility rates between HIV-positive and HIV-negative women. Our aim was to compare the fertility rates of HIV-infected and HIV-uninfected women in Cameroon in order to make recommendations on the appropriate adjustments when using antenatal sentinel data to estimate HIV prevalence
Methods: Cross-sectional, population-based study using data from 4493 sexually active women aged 15 to 49 years who participated in the 2004 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey.
Results: In the rural area, the age-specific fertility rates in both HIV positive and HIV negative women increased from 15-19 years age bracket to a maximum at 20-24 years and then decreased monotonically till 35-49 years. Similar trends were observed in the urban area. The overall fertility rate for HIV positive women was 118.7 births per 1000 woman-years (95% Confidence Interval [CI] 98.4 to 142.0) compared to 171.3 births per 1000 woman-years (95% CI 164.5 to 178.2) for HIV negative women. The ratio of the fertility rate in HIV positive women to the fertility rate of HIV negative women (called the relative inclusion ratio) was 0.69 (95% CI 0.62 to 0.75).
Conclusion: Fertility rates are lower in HIV-positive than HIV-negative women in Cameroon. The findings of this study support the use of summary RIR for the adjustment of HIV prevalence (among adult female population) obtained from sentinel surveillance in antenatal clinics.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/8/309
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sub-saharan africa sentinel surveillance pregnant-women general-population prevalence infection trends zambia adjustment zimbabwe
Subjects:	WC Communicable Diseases > Virus Diseases > Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. HIV Infections > WC 503.5 Complications WP Gynecology > Anatomy. Diseases. Injuries > WP 565 Fertility WP Gynecology > Anatomy. Diseases. Injuries > WP 570 Infertility (General). Infertility in the female
Faculty: Department:	Groups (2002 - 2012) > Child & Reproductive Health Group
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-8-309
Depositing User:	Users 19 not found.
Date Deposited:	27 Oct 2011 13:48
Last Modified:	17 Jul 2020 10:58
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/833

Statistics

View details

Actions (login required)

Edit Item