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This study aimed to characterize the risk of people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the UK progressing to pre-specified HIV-associated comorbidities, compared with matched, HIV-negative controls. Primary and secondary care records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) and linked Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) were used to identify PLHIV, and a matched cohort from the HIV-negative population. Kaplan Meier curves and Cox proportional hazard models were used to evaluate the risk of developing comorbidities including central nervous system (CNS) disorders, end-stage renal disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), hypertension, stroke and cancer. A total of 2945 PLHIV were matched to a cohort of 5890 HIV-negative controls. PLHIV demonstrated an increased hazard ratio (HR) for time to development of incident sleep disorders, depression, osteoporosis, stroke, cancer and renal disease when compared with their matched HIV-negative control. The HRs for anxiety, hypertension, diabetes and CVD were not significantly increased. PLHIV in the UK were at a higher risk of developing a number of comorbid conditions, highlighting the need for regular attendance of health reviews such as the annual health reviews recommended by the British HIV Associations (BHIVA) quality standard for care, which are currently not uniformly conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents obituaries for several medical personnel in Great Britain including Pranab Sathia, Jagmohan Singh and Janet Helen Smellie.

Objectives: Domestic violence screening is advocated in some healthcare settings. Evidence that it increases referral to support agencies or improves health outcomes is limited. This study aimed to (1) investigate the proportion of hospital patients reporting domestic violence, (2) describe characteristics and previous hospital attendances of affected patients and (3) assess referrals to an in-house domestic violence advisor from Camden Safety Net., Design: A series of observational studies., Setting: Three outpatient clinics at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust., Participants: 10,158 patients screened for domestic violence in community gynaecology, genitourinary medicine (GUM) and HIV medicine clinics between 1 October 2013 and 30 June 2014. Also 2253 Camden Safety Net referrals over the same period., Main Outcome Measures: (1) Percentage reporting domestic violence by age group gender, ethnicity and clinic. (2) Rates of hospital attendances in the past 3 years for those screening positive and negative. (3) Characteristics, uptake and risk assessment results for hospital in-house domestic violence referrals compared with Camden Safety Net referrals from other sources., Results: Of the 10,158 patients screened, 57.4% were female with a median age of 30 years. Overall, 7.1% reported ever-experiencing domestic violence, ranging from 5.7% in GUM to 29.4% in HIV services. People screening positive for domestic violence had higher rates of previous emergency department attendances (rate ratio (RR) 1.63, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.48), emergency inpatient admissions (RR 2.27, 95% CI 1.37 to 3.84) and day-case admissions (RR 2.03, 95% CI 1.23 to 3.43) than those screening negative. The 77 hospital referrals to the hospital-based domestic violence advisor during the study period were more likely to be taken up and to be classified as high risk than referrals from elsewhere., Conclusions: Selective screening for domestic violence in high-risk hospital clinic populations has the potential to identify affected patients and promote good uptake of referrals for in-house domestic violence support., (Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/)