Fig. 3

Forest plot for a given STI/anatomical site pair. Posterior means and 95 % credible intervals of the effect size for each study included in the meta-analysis. The effect size is expressed as the difference of HIV viral load (log10) between an individual HIV positive, co-infected with an STI and an individual only infected with HIV. The black square represents the mean of the distribution, its area is proportional to the number of data points associated with the specific STI/anatomical site pair; segments represent the 95 % credible intervals (CI). The red diamond shows the mean of the pooled effect (across all studies, STIs and anatomical sites) and the segment its 95 % CI. Bv: Bacterial vaginosis; Ct: Chlamydia trachomatis; Cv: Candidal vaginitis; Bacterial vaginosis; HPV: human papillomavirus; HSV: human simplex virus type 2; Ng: Neisseria gonorrhoeae; Tp: Treponema pallidum; Tv: Trichomonas vaginalis; Ur: urethritis