Recent Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Public Health graduate Dr. Dayana Rojas’ study “HIV-associated comorbidities as mediators of the association between people living with HIV and hospital-acquired infections“, was published by the American Journal of Infection Control. Dr. Rojas, along with a research team studied how hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) lead to poor health outcomes in hospitalized patients and may disproportionately affect the aging population of people living with HIV (PLWH). Her study determined the association between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and HAIs and analyzed the potential mediating effects of comorbidities. For this study, she used the Louisiana Hospital Inpatient Discharge Database for the years 2011-2015. All patients with at least 1 HAI diagnosis within this source population were included as cases in the case-control study, and a 1:1 ratio of controls were randomly selected from the same hospitals. This study found that people living with HIV are at an increased risk of developing a Central-Line Associated Blood Stream Infection (CLABSI), which is consistent with published literature. The mediation analyses indicated that having at least one comorbidity mediated the association between HIV and CLABSI diagnosis.
Dr. Rojas graduated from LSUHSC SoPH Epidemiology Program in May 2019.
