HIV life expectancy approaching normal

Now that antiretroviral treatment is almost universally available in the developed world, people with HIV are living long enough that other causes of death - such as cardiovascular disease - are starting to assume an ever-greater importance.

In fact, doctors working with HIV patients are now counselling that patients have an essentially normal life span as long as they take their antiretroviral medication as indicated.

Researchers in British Columbia looked at the life expectancy of a 20-year-old starting antiretrovirals in one of three periods - 1996 through 1999, 2000 through 2002, and from 2003 through 2005. Robert Hogg, of the University of British Columbia and colleagues looked at more than 26 000 people who started antiretroviral therapy in those periods.

As might be expected, they found that the years of life available to their standardised 20-year-old increased over time - from 24.3 years in the earliest period to 27.1 in 2000-2002 and 33.2 in 2003-2005.

Living to your early 50s is a far cry from a normal life span, but it is a far cry from not making it out of your 20s, which used to be the case in HIV infection.