Demographics of HIV-1 infection in Denmark: results from the Danish HIV Cohort Study.

We used a population-based cohort study design to describe the demographic characteristics of the HIV-infected population in Denmark and their variation over time. HIV treatment in Denmark is restricted to 9 centres, and all 3941 HIV-1 infected patients more than 15 y old seen at these centres in 1995 - 2003 were included. We found an estimated HIV prevalence of 70 per 100,000, and a mean annual incidence rate of 5.1 per 100,000 persons. The number of newly infected individuals was stable with a median of 231 per y ( period 1995 - 2002), whereas the number of deaths decreased from 166 in 1995 to 50 in 2000 (p = 0.000) and remained stable thereafter. Of the enrolled patients, 75 % were males, 80 % were Caucasian, 13 % were black African, and the primary risk behaviour was male-to-male sexual contact (44 %), heterosexual contact (36 %), and injection drug use (11 %). During the y 1995 - 2003 we found an increase in age at diagnosis (p = 0.000), and no major changes in gender, race, mode of infection, or baseline CD4+ cell count and viral load, neither overall nor within subgroups of patients. In this period 14.5 % had AIDS at the time of HIV diagnosis. Our data do not confirm concerns about unmonitored evolution in the HIV epidemic in Denmark.