In recent years, life expectancies for people living with HIV have jumped up dramatically with increased access to ever more-effective antiretroviral therapy (ART). A new study, of people receiving care in California, has found that between 1996/1997 and 2011, the life expectancy of people living with HIV after age 20 has increased by 178%—from 19.1 years to 53.1 years.
“These findings confirm that ART has had a substantial impact on the survival of HIV patients, and suggest that early ART initiation and risk reduction strategies, such as smoking cessation, may further reduce the remaining gap in survival relative to HIV-uninfected individuals,” said researcher and his collegues. This study is significant because it directly compared the life expectancies and measures of health of people living with HIV and HIV-negative people with equal access to health care (i.e., who were all…
