The HIV Outpatient Study (HOPS) Activity to Abstract Data from Persons Receiving Ambulatory Care for HIV Infection in the United States

HOPS, one of the largest U.S. government-funded longitudinal cohort studies, follows HIV-infected patients to gain insights to improve prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS. CDC initiated the study in 1993 to describe and monitor trends in demographics, symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments in a population of HIV-infected outpatients in nine clinics across the United States. HOPS researchers at these clinics gather clinical, immunologic and virologic data, as well as genotypic and phenotypic information through periodic reviews of medical records. Through analysis of HOPS data, researchers have verified the impact of existing therapeutics, gained knowledge to inform new best practices in prevention and treatment and discovered new concerns warranting additional study. To date, researchers have shared HOPS study findings through 56 published manuscripts and 115 abstracts and presentations, thus enhancing the medical community’s understanding of prolonged survival, the metabolic problems associated with combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), adherence to cART, and the occurrence of comorbidities.