Life expectancy for people living with HIV in the United States is near normal, the study says

Testing for HIV is no longer a specific death sentence, and new studies show that Americans infected with HIV today have a lifespan similar to that of their non-virus-infected peers.

“In the early days of the AIDS pandemic, getting a diagnosis of AIDS was incredibly bad news, and the prognosis for survival was really bad. That’s not true today,” said lead author Jesse Edwards. It was.

Edwards, an assistant professor of research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said:

Edwards and her colleagues found that the HIV / AIDS mortality gap narrowed dramatically between 1999 and 2017, especially since 2011.

They use US federal statistics to determine the mortality rate of nearly 83,000 adults treated for HIV between 1999 and 2017 at 13 US sites that are part of the AIDS collaboration in North America. I did.

Those people were compared to a subset of the HIV-free US population that matched by age, gender, race / ethnicity, and country of origin.

According to Edwards, researchers were interested in finding out if HIV-infected people had a higher mortality rate than the general population in the years immediately following the start of treatment.

“This is a really important time and point for the intervention of people living with HIV,” she said. “This is the time when we can decide on the treatments that clinicians prescribe and how to treat other symptoms that those patients have.”

Researchers have found that the difference in early mortality between HIV-infected people and the general population decreases over time-the difference was 11 percent points for those who entered care between 1999 and 2004. However, it dropped to 2.7 percentage points for those who started care between 2011 and 2017.

During the latter period, Edwards said, “HIV-infected people are only about 3 percentage points more likely to die in the next five years than their peers in the general population.”

And the study found that the situation was even better for young adults. Mortality rates for people who participated in HIV care between the ages of 18 and 34 were only about 1 percentage point higher over the next five years than their peers in the general population.

It was a success story in some respects, but Edwards said concerns continued.

“With new guidelines and these highly effective drugs, this gap still remains,” she said, suggesting that it points the way for future research.

In addition, a new study looked only at changes in US mortality. Progress has also been made in developing countries, but Edwards pointed out that new drug treatments are not becoming more widespread.

The findings were published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

HIV is a virus that causes AIDS, a disease that weakens the immune system, and gradually destroys the body’s ability to fight infections and certain cancers.

It spreads most often through sexual contact. Intravenous substance use; from infected women to birth or lactating babies.

According to an editorial accompanying the study, the first case was reported 40 years ago, and AIDS-related deaths in the United States peaked in the mid-1990s, exceeding 50,000 per year. At that time, it was the leading cause of death between the ages of 25 and 44.

Antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV can reduce the amount of virus in the blood to levels that standard tests cannot detect.

Dr. Marshall Gresby, Deputy Chief of Infectious Diseases at Weil Cornell Medical College in New York City, said advances in antiretroviral therapy have contributed to a dramatic reduction in mortality.

He said the drug combination is now easier to take, more powerful and has fewer side effects. And people are being treated early in the process of their infection.

However, Gresby said concerns continue about the age-related complications of HIV infection. About half of people living with HIV in the United States are over 50 years old.

He also said it was important to understand that the improvement in mortality reported in the study was actually focused on the people being treated. Glesby pointed out that not all people who are infected with HIV are aware of HIV and many who are infected with HIV are untreated.

“It’s important from the perspective of their individual health, from the perspective of preventing infections, and from the perspective of public health,” he said.

COVID-19 has also affected the past year. Gresby said interruptions in the supply of antiretroviral drugs are expected to have a significant impact on HIV-related mortality.

In the meantime, efforts are underway to develop treatments that can be taken, perhaps semi-annually or annually.

“Despite the simplification of the regimen, much effort has been made to address concerns about compliance with antiretroviral therapies, which can still be a challenge for some people,” Gresby said. Stated.

“This is another major focus of the study, making it even easier for people to take antiretroviral drugs,” Glesby said.

For more information

The· Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Find out more about HIV and AIDS.

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