Tate JP, et al. - As people with HIV infection experience mortality more vs uninfected individuals in spite of viral suppression and immune response on antiretroviral therapy, clinical biomarkers of general health with age, CD4+ cell count, and HIV-1 RNA were incorporated in the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) Index to discriminate mortality risk in a variety of HIV-positive populations. Researchers here examined the influence of additional biomarkers in enhancing discrimination. They used 28,390 patients from VACS for development and 12,109 patients from the Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration (ART-CC) for validation to collect laboratory values from a randomly selected visit between 2000 and 2014, at least 1 year after antiretroviral therapy initiation. Patients were followed for 5-year all-cause mortality through September 2016. Deaths in 7,293 VACS patients and 722 ART-CC patients, were reported. Outcomes revealed improved discrimination with VACS Index 2.0, adding albumin, white blood count, and BMI to version 1.0 and using continuous variables. This index is highly transportable to external settings.