Table 2.

Base-case model results.

ART strategy	Undiscounted LE (years)	Discounted LE (years)	Undiscounted lifetime costs	Discounted lifetime costs	ICER ($/life-year saved)
South Africa; children presenting at age 12 months after in-utero/intrapartum infection
No ART	2.83a	2.52	11 450	10 290
First-line LPV/r	28.79	17.11	41 350	21 950	800b
First-line NVP	27.61	16.59	44 030	23 370	Dominatedc

Costs are in 2012 USD. Discounting is at 3% per year. ART, antiretroviral therapy; ICER, incremental cost-effectiveness ratio; LE, life expectancy; LPV/r, lopinavir/ritonavir; NVP, nevirapine.

^aLife expectancies are mean values projected by the model for a cohort of children presenting to care at 12 months of age. Discounted life expectancies, which value life-years in the future to be worth ‘less’ than life-years in the present, are not directly comparable to clinical experience.

^bWHO (WHO-CHOICE) recommendations for country-specific gross domestic product (GDP)-based cost-effectiveness thresholds are based primarily on cost per quality-adjusted life-year saved or cost per disability-adjusted life-year averted. Because of limited health utility weight data in children, we project nonquality-weighted life expectancy, and thus calculate ICERs in dollars per life-year saved.

^cDominated: Here, refers to a strategy that is more expensive and less effective than its alternative. This indicates that first-line lopinavir/ritonavir is cost-saving compared to first-line nevirapine in these scenarios. By convention, we do not calculate an ICER comparing these two strategies, and instead calculate the ICER of first-line lopinavir/ritonavir compared to no ART.