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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Jun 27.
Published in final edited form as: Ann Intern Med. 2008 Feb 5;148(3):178–185. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-148-3-200802050-00004

Appendix Figure 1.

Appendix Figure 1

Quantity of therapy-related toxicity required to favor earlier rather than later initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (CART).

In each bar, as the hazard ratio of therapy-related toxicities increase, the different fills indicate the preferred treatment strategy, stratified by age and viral load. Therapy-related toxicity is manifested by greater non–HIV-related mortality. The upper bound used in our base-case analyses (3.8 × non–HIV-related mortality) favors starting therapy at a CD4 count of 500 cells/mm3 at age 30 years and at age 40 years if the viral load is greater than 30 000 copies/mL. If toxicity were below 2.4 × non–HIV-related mortality, starting therapy at a CD4 count of 500 cells/mm3 would be preferred for all ages and viral loads examined.