US Pharm. 2014;39(2):35.
Approaching the life expectancy of the population at large, a 20-year-old HIV-positive adult on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the United States or Canada may be expected to live into his or her early 70s, according to results published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hasina Samji and colleagues from the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) and the North American AIDS Cohort Collaboration on Research and Design (NA-ACCORD).
The life expectancies of nearly 23,000 patients on ART were calculated based on mortality rates in the early to mid-2000s. Participants in the study were from the NA-ACCORD and aged 20 years or older. Changes in life expectancy from 2000 to 2007 among HIV-positive individuals were then evaluated by selected sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, such as drug use history and immune cell counts. The authors found that life expectancy at age 20 increased from 36.1 to 51.4 years from 2000-2002 to 2006-2007.
