• Lorena van den Bogaart, Alice Ranzani, Letizia Oreni, Andrea Giacomelli, Mario Corbellino, Stefano Rusconi, Massimo Galli, Spinello Antinori, and Anna Lisa Ridolfo.
• Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences "Luigi Sacco", University of Milan, Milan, Italy; III Division of Infectious Diseases, ASST Fatebenefratelli Sacco, Milan, Italy. Electronic address: lorena.vanden@unimi.it.
• Eur. J. Intern. Med. 2020 Mar 1; 73: 30-35.

BackgroundLate diagnoses are still a cause of increased HIV-related morbidity and mortality despite the availability of highly effective treatments. The aim of this study was to identify indicator conditions (ICs) in late presenters with HIV infection (LPs) that may represent missed opportunities of undertaking earlier HIV testing.MethodsThe medical records of LPs referred to a specialist clinic in Milan, Italy, between 2011 and 2017 were reviewed to assess the frequency of ICs during the five years preceding diagnosis. Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the factors associated with missed opportunities of making an earlier diagnosis.ResultsThe analysis considered 203 LPs (60.6% of the patients newly diagnosed as having HIV infection during the study period). Most had had ≥1 medical encounter in the five years before diagnosis, and 54 (26.6%) had been diagnosed as having ≥1 IC without undergoing HIV testing. The most frequent ICs were herpes zoster (19.8%), constitutional symptoms (17.4%) and lympho/thrombocytopenia (12.8%), and the missed opportunities for testing occurred in the settings of primary care (44.9%), specialist medical (38.2%) or surgical services (11.3%), and emergency departments (5.6%). Twenty-five (53.2%) of the 47 subjects with a non AIDS-defining IC had AIDS at the time of the diagnosis of HIV infection. Subjects aged >60 years were at increased risk of missed diagnostic opportunities (aOR 4.80, p = 0.008).ConclusionImplementing IC-guided HIV testing in non-specialist settings is an essential means of reducing late diagnoses of HIV infection even in the case of older subjects.Copyright © 2019 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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