Figure 1.

A directed acyclic graph (DAG)^23,24 depicting our hypothesized conception of the system under investigation. We seek to estimate the causal contribution of age, biologic sex, peripheral CD4+ T cell count, HIV burden (proxy measured by levels of HIV RNA in plasma), and extent of Kaposi sarcoma (KS) on the occurrence of death among adults living with HIV in Kenya and Uganda after the diagnosis of KS. The DAG was used to guide which variables to control for when assessing the total or direct effect of the various constructs on death. In this rendition of the DAG, as depicted by the hashed edge and “?”, we are focusing on investigating the relationship between extent of KS and death. Other perspectives on this DAG were used to investigate potential causal roles for the other variables (e.g., CD4+ T cell count).