Subset of variables from the CHAIN project

Description

The CHAIN project was a longitudinal cohort study of people living with HIV in New York City, which was recruited in 1994 from a large number of medical care and social service agencies serving HIV in New York City. This subset of data pertain to the sixth round of interviews.

Usage

data(CHAIN)

Format

A data.frame with 532 observations on the following 8 variables.

log_virus

log of self reported viral load level, where zero represents an undetectable level.

age

age at time of the interview

income

annual family income in 10 intervals

healthy

a continuous scale of physical health with a theoretical range between 0 and 100 where better health is associated with higher scale values

mental

a binary measure of poor mental health ( 1=Yes, 0=No )

damage

ordered interval for the CD4 count, which is an indicator of how much damage HIV has caused to the immune system

treatment

a three-level ordered variable: 0=Not currently taking HAART (Highly Active AntiretRoviral Therapy) 1=taking HAART but nonadherent, 2=taking HAART and adherent

Details

A missing value in the log virus load level was assigned to individuals who either could not recall their viral load level, did not have a viral load test in the six month preceding the interview, or reported their viral loads as "good" or "bad".

Source

http://cchps.columbia.edu/research.cfm

References

Messeri P, Lee G, Abramson DA, Aidala A, Chiasson MA, Jones JD. (2003). “Antiretroviral therapy and declining AIDS mortality in New York City”. Medical Care 41:512–521.