Abstract
Background: the International Cohort Consortium of Infectious Disease (RESPOND) is a collaboration dedicated to research on HIV and other infectious diseases. Methods: RESPOND is a flexible organization, with several independent substudies operating under one shared governance. HIV-related variables, including full antiretroviral therapy (ART) history, are collected annually for all participants and merged with substudy specific data into a shared data pool. Incident clinical events are reported using standardized forms. Prospective follow-up started 1/10/17 (enrolment) with retrospective data collected back to 01/01/12. Results: Overall, 17 cohorts from Europe and Australia provided data on 26,258 people living with HIV (PLWH). The majority (43.3%) of the population were white, with men-sex-with-men accounting for 43.3% of the risk for HIV acquisition. The median age was 48 years (IQR 40–56) and 5.2% and 25.5% were known to be co-infected with hepatitis B or C. While 5.3% were ART-naïve, the median duration on ART was 10.1 years (4.8–17.6), with 89.5% having a VL <200 copies/mL and the median CD4 count being 621 cells/µL (438–830). Malignancies (n = 361) and cardiovascular disease (n = 168) were the predominant reported clinical events. Conclusion: RESPOND’s large, diverse study population and standardized clinical endpoints puts the consortium in a unique position to respond to the diverse modern challenges for PLWH.
Highlights
The International Cohort Consortium of Infectious Disease (RESPOND) was formed in 2017 as a prospective, multi-cohort collaboration for the study of infectious diseases, with a special focus on people living with HIV (PLWH)
RESPOND was founded upon the groundwork laid by outstanding European HIV cohort collaborations such as EuroSIDA, the Collaboration of Observational HIV Epidemiological Research Europe (COHERE), and Data Collection on Adverse events of Anti-HIV Drugs (D:A:D) studies, and utilizes a similar, well-established infrastructure [1,2,3,4]
By 1/10/17, 17 cohorts had agreed to engage in the consortium; 15 cohorts contributed to the first data merger, with a total of 26,258 individuals (Table 2)
Summary
The International Cohort Consortium of Infectious Disease (RESPOND) was formed in 2017 as a prospective, multi-cohort collaboration for the study of infectious diseases, with a special focus on people living with HIV (PLWH). RESPOND was founded upon the groundwork laid by outstanding European HIV cohort collaborations such as EuroSIDA, the Collaboration of Observational HIV Epidemiological Research Europe (COHERE), and Data Collection on Adverse events of Anti-HIV Drugs (D:A:D) studies, and utilizes a similar, well-established infrastructure [1,2,3,4]. All involved in RESPOND can contribute to the ongoing scientific agendas. Together, these dynamic features facilitate responses to a broad range of unmet research needs. The large size of RESPOND allows scientific questions to be addressed that individual cohorts do not have the size to investigate themselves.
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