Roger Paredes

Comparison of the efficacy of HAART: single, dual or triple-class antiretroviral therapy

Current antiretroviral therapy guidelines [1] recommend the combination of at least two nucleoside retrotranscriptase inhibitors (NRTI) plus at least one protease inhibitor (PI) and/or at least one nonnucleoside retrotranscriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) for the treatment of HIV infection. Different specific drugs are chosen to comply with this general scheme considering the stage of the disease, the occurrence of AIDS-defining events, plasma viral load and patient’s immune status, prior pharmacologic history, likeliness to adhere to treatment, as well as drug interactions, adverse events and comorbidity.

Statistical Challenges for Human Microbiome Analysis

DNA sequencing technologies have revolutionized microbiome studies. In this work we analyze microbiome data from an HIV study focused on the characterization of microbiome composition in HIV-1 infected patients. A 155 cohort of HIV infected and non-infected individuals is analyzed to characterize dietary and gut microbiome association in this group of patients. A penalized Dirichlet Multinomial regression model has been considered. The assumed underlying Dirichlet distribution in this modelization provides additional flexibility to the multinomial model which results in a better fit of the typically overdispersed microbiome data.