Really Good News: Life Expectancy of Newly Diagnosed HIV Patients in North Am. Approaching that of Gen. Population

In really good news, fit for Christmas, the Vancouver Sun reports on a Study by Dr. Julio Montaner that is being published in the journal PLoS One.  The study’s conclusion is that newly diagnosed HIV patients’ in the US and Canada is approaching that of the general population. The study suggests that 20 year-olds diagnosed with HIV today can expect to live into their early 70’s 

 

Canadian Press/AP Photo: Int'l AIDS Conf. Slide

That is a sharp contrast to the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when a diagnosis of HIV was a death sentence. People who contracted the disease often died within months or at best a few years, their bodies ravaged by opportunistic infections their demolished immune systems could not quell.

[Montaner] said the longevity gains have been remarkable. In 2000, the average 20-year-old newly diagnosed with HIV could expect to live another 36 years. By 2006, that figure had climbed to 51 years.

"I don't think, in all honesty, that there has been an area of medicine that has undergone (as big a) revolutionary evolution over our lifetime as HIV has," Montaner says.

There are still discrepancies. Those who contract HIV through intravenous drug use still live shorter lives, as do those who contract it through homosexual sex (though they are expected to live longer than drug users) than those who contract it through heterosexual sex.  Though the discrepancies may be due to lifestyle factors not associated with the disease.  These findings are also limited to Canada and the US and not to places where HIV ravages the populations and anti-retroviral drugs are not widely available like India and sub-Saharan Africa.

This is still extremely positive news and a far cry from even the early 2000s when I sat and cared for a friend who was dying of AIDS in a New York hospital.  He had contracted HIV in the 1990s and got AIDS soon after and succumbed to a horrible, wasting death.  Back then, there was the promise of longer life as people watched Magic Johnson live out a seemingly healthy life with the use of anti-retroviral drugs and research marched on.  Our prayers for effective treatment are seemingly answered.  There is still work on a vaccine.  Work we can all hope and pray continues and comes to fruition.

Our prayers and thanks go to Dr. Montaner and those who work with him and in the field for all the work they have done and continue to do. God bless you.

Full Article and photo credit: Vancouver Sun