Comorbidities among persons living with HIV (PLWH) in Florida: a network analysis

People living with HIV (PLWH) experience a higher rate of age-related comorbidities at younger ages. Understanding common comorbidities among PLWH and their relationship to one another could be significant in improving aging for PLWH. The goal of the present study is to identify the most common comorbidities among PLWH and the relationship between them using network analysis. We used abstracted electronic medical record (EMR) data of PLWH from the Florida Cohort study, a prospective cohort study conducted in eight cities in Florida, USA. We used International Classification of Diseases (10th revision, ICD-10) code to classify comorbidities and organ systems. Network analysis was conducted to determine the degree and betweenness centrality among comorbidities. We included 756 PLWH with an average age of 46.4 years (SD 11.3) in the analysis. Infectious diseases (A00-B99, 50.8%), mental and behavioural (F01-F99, 47.0%), endocrine, nutritional and metabolic (E00-E88, 45.2%), and circulatory (I00-I99, 39%) disorders were the most prevalent system comorbidities among PLWH. Hypertensive disorder (I10-I1635.8%), dyslipidaemia (E78, 25.7%) and major depressive disorder (F32-F33, 23.9%) were the most common non-infectious conditions affecting PLWH. Viral hepatitis (B15-B19, 17.1%) and syphilis (A15-A53, 12%) were the most common coinfections among PLWH. Hypertension, dyslipidaemia and major depressive disorder were the most central of the comorbidities among PLWH. Comorbidities among PLWH were most prevalent for chronic disease and mental illness. Targeting shared disease risk factors in addition to monitoring known pathological pathways may prevent comorbidities among PLWH.