Applications of phase type survival trees in HIV disease progression modelling

Abstract

It is important to model progression of a disease to understanding if the patient's condition is improving or getting worse. In the case of HIV disease, the change in the patient's CD4+ T cell count is used to calculate the progression of HIV disease i.e. if the CD4 count goes down it represent the progression of the patient's HIV disease. Due to the lack of an effective cure for HIV disease, it is crucial to monitor the disease progression to managing HIV disease effectively. Therefore, this study is aimed to model HIV disease progression by using phase type survival trees to cluster patients into homogenous groups based on their disease progression to understand the effect of different factors of prognostic significance and their interactions affecting the disease progression. The proposed methods are evaluated using an empirical data of 1,838 HIV-infected patients. The methods developed in this study can also be used for modelling the progression of other chronic conditions or diseases.