The effect of school attendance and school dropout on incident HIV and HSV-2 among young women in rural South Africa enrolled in HPTN 068

Objective: To estimate the association between school attendance, school dropout, and risk of incident HIV and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) infection among young women. Design: We used longitudinal data from a randomized controlled trial in rural Mpumalanga province, South Africa, to assess the association between school days attended, school dropout, and incident HIV and HSV-2 in young women aged 13-23 years. Methods: We examined inverse probability of exposure weighted survival curves and used them to calculate 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5-year risk differences and risk ratios for the effect of school attendance on incident HIV and HSV-2. A marginal structural Cox model was used to estimate hazard ratios for the effect of school attendance and school dropout on incident infection. Results: Risk of infection increased over time as young women aged, and was higher in young women with low school attendance (