Objectives
The Korea HIV/AIDS cohort was constructed with 18 hospitals that care for HIV-infected individuals in 2006. We compared the epidemiological and immunological characteristics of the cohort registrants with those of the HIVinfected population at the time of HIV diagnosis.
Methods
This study was conducted on 5717 people living with HIV/AIDS from 1985 to 2009, of which 789 individuals registered with the Korea HIV/AIDS cohort study. Individuals who had data from initial CD4+ T-cell counts measured within 6 months following HIV diagnosis were selected as study participants to predict the status of disease progression at the time of HIV diagnosis. A total of 2886 patients (50%) were selected from people living with HIV/AIDS, of whom 424 individuals (54%) were cohort registrants. The χ² test and Wilcoxon rank sum test were used for analysis.
Results
The distributions of age, marital status, diagnosed regions, reason for HIV testing, and screening site were similar between the HIV-infected population and the cohort registrants. In 1985–2004, the male ratio for the cohort registrants (94.3%) was significantly higher than that measured for the HIV-infected population (89.5%) (<i>p</i> = 0.0339). With regard to transmission route, homosexual contact of cohort registrants (46.6%) was higher than that of the HIV-infected population (40.1%) (<i>p</i> = 0.022) in 2005–2009. No statistical difference in CD4+ T-cell counts at the time of HIV diagnosis was found between the HIVinfected population and cohort registrants (<i>p</i> = 0.2195).
Conclusion
The Korea HIV/AIDS cohort registrants represent the HIV-infected population, and the data collected from this cohort could be used as a foundation for national statistics.

Objectives
The incidence of anal disease is higher among persons with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection than among the general population. We surveyed the status of seroprevalence in colorectal hospitals in Korea.
Methods
The survey was conducted in colorectal hospitals in Korea from November to December 2008. The questionnaire was comprised of six topics about the status of HIV testing in colorectal hospitals. We gathered the data by website (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://hivqa.nih.go.kr/risk">http://hivqa.nih.go.kr/risk</ext-link>) or fax.
Results
Among 774 colorectal hospitals contacted, 109 (14%) hospitals participated in the survey. Among these, 48 hospitals (44%) performed HIV tests in their own hospitals and 11 (23%) took HIV testing by rapid method. The main reason for recommending an HIV test was surgical operation (54%) followed by endoscope (11%) and health checkup (9%). The annual number of HIV tests increased from 58,647 (at 21 hospitals) in 2002 to 246,709 (at 58 hospitals) in 2007. HIV seroprevalence was >3.0 per 10,000 individuals during 2002–2005, decreased to 2.2 per 10,000 individuals in 2006 and rose to 2.8 per 10,000 individuals in 2007.
Conclusions
HIV seroprevalence of colorectal hospitals was more than twice that of general hospitals in Korea. HIV surveillance systems based on colorectal hospitals for HIV/AIDS transmission prevention by early HIV diagnosis are needed.