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Geriatric HIV: living with multiple medical conditions will become the norm as population ages
Roger Pebody, 2015-06-16 10:00:00
In fifteen years time, the clinical needs of Dutch people living with HIV will have changed substantially due to three quarters of them being over the age of 50. Overall, 84% will have at least one medical condition such as cardiovascular disease or cancer on top of their HIV, 28% will have three or more additional medical conditions and 53% will have problems with drug interactions or contraindications.
The predictions come from the most detailed analysis of likely future trends in HIV care for an ageing population of people living with HIV yet conducted, prepared by Mikaela Smit and colleagues at Imperial College London and published online last week in Lancet Infectious Diseases. The findings are likely to be relevant to other Western countries with mature epidemics concentrated in gay men, the authors say.
Due to effective antiretroviral therapy, the life spans of HIV-positive people are ever longer. Previous researchers have estimated the increasing proportion of patients in their fifties or sixties. They have shown that older adults tend to have better adherence and are more likely to have an undetectable viral load than younger people.
But researchers have not calculated how patients’ increasing ages will impact the prevalence of medical conditions that are commonly experienced in older age. Managing these co-morbidities is likely to substantially complicate the delivery of HIV clinical care.
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