Abstract Pathogen load is considered fundamental to infection patho-biology but is unobserved or inadequately measured. We used latent variable modelling to characterise HIV-associated tuberculosis mycobacterial load in 519 inpatients. Tests on urine and blood, but not sputum, showed substantial co-variance. Summarizing covariance via measurement models estimated pathogen loads with stronger correlation with host inflammation and mortality than traditional measures like blood culture time-to-positivity.
Sossen et al. (Wed,) studied this question.