CASCADE: Concerted Action on SeroConversion to AIDS and Death
in Europe
CASCADE was established in 1997 as a
collaboration between the investigators of European cohorts of
people with well-estimated dates of HIV seroconversion known as
seroconverters.
Working as a network of epidemiologists,
statisticians, virologists, and clinicians from lead HIV
institutions in 15 European countries as well as Australia, Canada,
and Africa, CASCADE constitutes more than 21,000 HIV-infected
individuals drawn from over 300 clinics.
CASCADE’s main aim is to monitor
newly-infected individuals and those already enrolled in studies,
covering the entire duration of HIV infection. Seroconverters are
recruited into the individual cohorts locally and nationally and
are typically followed up for life. Through pooling data from so
many different cohorts, CASCADE has been able to address issues
which cannot be reliably addressed from single studies alone.
Follow-up data from seroconverters are
valuable in being able to allow us to relate events to the same
time since an individual first became infected with HIV.
Seroconverters thus provide a unique opportunity to study HIV
throughout its whole infection period, to enable researchers to
examine the characteristics of recently-acquired HIV infection in
the population and changes over time.
CASCADE’s aims focus on identification of
early HIV infection and research questions requiring knowledge of
the time of seroconversion. Specifically, the network aims to
identify and characterise newly-acquired infection, its
contribution to the propagation of the epidemic, and to monitor
short and long-term outcome and their determinants, especially in
terms of the host, HIV, and the relationship between the two.
For more information, visit
the CASCADE website