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Life expectancy for people with HIV in Africa may be comparable to general population if they are on treatment
Carole Leach-Lemens, 2011-07-18 22:00:00
Life expectancy for HIV-positive adults starting antiretroviral treatment (ART) in Uganda is comparable to life expectancy for all Ugandan adults. This was reported by Edward J Mills and colleagues in a prospective cohort study of over 22,000 adults who started ART between 2000 and 2009, published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Adult women had a greater life expectancy than adolescents and men.
The higher the person’s CD4 cell count when starting ART, the greater the life expectancy.
These findings mirror earlier findings from research in developed countries where ART has dramatically increased life expectancy.
Deborah Cotton, in an accompanying editorial, notes that these results clearly dispel the thinking at the turn of the century of “two AIDS realities going forward: a chronic but increasingly manageable disease in the developed world, and an unstoppable, unspeakable tragedy in Africa and other resource-constrained countries”.
What has happened in resource-poor settings in the past decade has been a “triumph of medicine and public health”, she added.
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