WITH A VIEW TO ADVERSE JOB SEARCH BEHAVIOR AFFECTS OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE, THE PAPER USES A THEORETICAL MODEL TO DETERMINE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIME SEQUENCE OF BENEFITS THAT MAXIMIZES THE EXPECTED UTILITY OF THE UNEMPLOYED, GIVEN THAT THEY ACT IN A SELF-INTERESTED WAY AND GIVEN THE TOTAL SIZE OF THE UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BUDGET.
"The primary purpose of unemployment insurance (U.I.) is no doubt to insure individuals against loss of wage income. However, U.I. is commonly believed to adversely affect job search behavior and to lengthen the duration of unemployment. With these issues in mind, this paper asks how U.I. benefits ought to be paid out over time. Specifically, the paper uses a theoretical model to determine characteristics of the time sequence of benefits that maximizes the expected utility of the unemploymed, given that they act in a self-interested way and given the total size of the U.I. budget." (Author's abstract) ((en))
AbstractIntroductionPrevious studies have reported better immunovirological characteristics in women compared with men after HIV seroconversion. We investigated whether differences persisted under long‐term antiretroviral therapy (ART) in individuals treated since acute and early HIV‐1 infection (AHI).MethodsData were obtained for 262 women and 1783 men enrolled between 1996 and 2017 in the French multicentre ANRS PRIMO cohort. We modelled the viral response, long‐term immune recovery and HIV DNA decay in the 143 women and 1126 men who initiated ART within the first three months of infection.ResultsThe participants were mostly white. The mean age was 37 years at AHI diagnosis. Pre‐ART viral loads were lower in women than men, 5.2 and 5.6 log10 copies/mL (p = 0.001). After ART initiation, women more rapidly achieved viral suppression than men (adjusted hazard ratio: 1.33, 95% confidence interval 1.09 to 1.69). They also experienced a faster increase in CD4+ T‐cell count and CD4:CD8 ratio during the first months of treatment. Sex‐related differences in CD4+ T‐cell counts were more pronounced with increasing age. This led to a sustained mean difference of 99 to 168 CD4+ T‐cells/µL depending on age between women and men at 150 months of ART. Moreover, CD4:CD8 ratio of women was higher than that of men by 0.31, at 150 months of ART. There was no statistically significant difference between sexes for the levels of HIV DNA over time (mean estimate at the last modelling point: 1.9 log10 copies/106 PBMCs after 70 months of ART for both sexes).ConclusionsThe high level of immune recovery and decrease in total HIV DNA levels achieved after ART initiation during AHI reinforce the importance of early diagnosis of HIV infection and immediate ART initiation. The immunological benefit of being female increased throughout prolonged ART duration, which may give women additional protection from adverse clinical events and premature ageing.
IntroductionA key objective of combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) is to reach and maintain high CD4 cell counts to provide long‐term protection against AIDS‐defining opportunistic infections and malignancies, as well as other comorbidities. However, a high proportion of patients present late for care. Our objective was to assess CD4 cell count recovery up to seven years in naïve patients initiating cART with at least three drugs in usual clinical care.MethodsFrom the French Hospital Database on HIV, we selected naïve individuals initiating cART from 2000 with at least two years of follow‐up. Participants were further required to have achieved viral load suppression by six months after initiating cART and were censored in case of virological failure. We calculated the proportion of patients (Kaplan‐Meier estimates) who achieved CD4 recovery to >500/mm3 according to baseline CD4 cell count.ResultsA total of 15,025 patients were analyzed with a median follow‐up on ART of 65.5 months (IQR: 42.3–96.0). At cART initiation, the median age was 38.6 years (IQR: 32.2–46.0), 9734 (64.8%) were men, median CD4 cell count was 239 (IQR: 130–336) and 2668 (17.8%) had a prior AIDS event. Results are presented in the Table 1. KM estimates of achieving a CD4 cell count >500/mm3 over time according to baseline CD4 cell count at cART initiation
Baseline CD4+cell count, Median (IQR) Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7
ConclusionsThis study shows that CD4 cell counts continue to increase seven years after cART initiation, whatever the baseline CD4 cell count. Failing to achieve CD4 recovery with continuous viral load suppression is rare for naïve patients initiating cART in routine clinical practice, but takes substantially longer in patients who initiate antiretroviral therapy at low CD4 cell counts.
