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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 In addition, women had a longer life expectancy compared with men (64.2 versus 62.8 years). This may be due to women starting their treatment earlier, Hogg's group suggests.
"This sort of a mind shift for people, even physicians and researchers, that when you look at this life expectancy for these people is even longer than expected," Hogg said.
Rowena Johnston, vice president for research at the Foundation for AIDS Research, thinks that antiretroviral treatment has transformed HIV/AIDS from an early death sentence to a manageable chronic illness.
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"One of the most striking successes of HIV/AIDS research has been the development of antiretroviral therapy that significantly extends the lives of people living with HIV," Johnston said.
Increasingly longer life expectancy is obviously a boon to patients and doctors, but it comes with increased risk of side effects and other difficulties associated with taking these medications for long periods of time, Johnston said. "Clearly, though, the benefits outweigh the risks," she added.
"Longer life expectancies are shifting what has been the traditional portrait of AIDS, such as body-wasting along with numerous rare infections, into a condition that is increasingly associated with some of the manifestations we traditionally think of with older age, like cancers, heart disease, kidney and liver disease, and insulin resistance," Johnston said.
However, Johnston thinks that many HIV patients continue to fall through the cracks. "What we haven't managed to do as well is to increase numbers of people getting tested, so that they find out about their HIV infection early enough to reap these benefits," she said.
More information
For more on HIV/AIDS, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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