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Confidence Intervals For Biomarker-Based Human Immunodeficiecny Virus Incidence Estimates And Differences Using Prevalent Data, Ron Brookmeyer, S Cole, H Chu

Ron Brookmeyer

Prevalent biological specimens can be used to estimate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) incidence using a two-stage immunologic testing algorithm that hinges on the average time, say T, between testing HIV positive on highly and less sensitive enzyme immunoassays. Common approaches to confidence interval (CI) estimation for this incidence measure have included (1) ignoring the random error in T or (2) employing a Bonferroni adjustment to the box method. The authors present alternative Monte Carlo-based CIs for this incidence measure, as well as CIs for the biomarker-based incidence difference; standard approaches to CIs are typically appropriate for the incidence ratio. Using …