Overview
The HIV-CAUSAL Collaboration is a multinational collaboration of prospective studies of HIV-infected individuals from five European countries and the United States. HIV-CAUSAL stands for HIV Cohorts Analyzed
Using
Structural Approaches to Longitudinal data.
The collaboration aims at answering three main questions: when to start antiretroviral therapy, what antiretroviral regime to use initially, and when to switch to another regime. These questions are unlikely to be answered by a single study and thus the need for a collaborative project. The HIV-CAUSAL Collaboration pools data collected for clinical purposes within health care systems with few barriers to access in the populations they serve.
The data are analyzed by using methods specifically designed for causal inference from complex longitudinal data:
- inverse probability weighting of marginal structural models
- g-estimation of structural nested models
- parametric g-formula
The HIV-CAUSAL Collaboration is designed to inform evidence-based guidelines and the planning of clinical trials. In addition, the collaboration will facilitate understanding and training in causal modeling across leading HIV observational research groups in the United States and Europe.