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AIDS Treatments Save Millions of Years of Life
 HIV
therapy has provided 3 million years of extended life to Americans with AIDS
since 1989, researchers funded by NIH reported. The researchers used a computer
model to simulate HIV disease progression both with and without treatment.
The investigators, led by Dr. Kenneth Freedberg of Massachusetts General Hospital
and the Harvard Medical School Center for AIDS Research, defined 6 distinct eras
of AIDS treatment between 1989 and 2003. In the first 2 periods, 1989 to 1992
and 1993 to 1995, drugs became available to prevent two common infections — Pneumocyctis
jirovecii pneumonia and Mycobacterium avium complex. Although the
drugs improved the average survival benefit by only 2.6 months, those early eras
helped to shape the perception that AIDS was a treatable condition. The next
4 periods began with the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy
(HAART) in 1996, and correspond to increasingly effective HAART and other advances
in HIV care.
Their paper appears in the July 1, 2006, issue of The Journal of Infectious
Diseases. The computer model projected that a person beginning treatment
in 2003 could expect to live more than 13 years longer than if he or she had
been diagnosed in 1988. The total cumulative survival benefit across all eras
from all forms of HIV therapy was over 2.8 million years. Drugs to prevent
mother-to-child transmission of HIV have averted 2,900 infant infections, the
model estimated, saving an additional 137,000 years of life.
About a quarter of those infected with HIV in the U.S. are thought to be unaware
of their infection. Of those who are aware, only 57% are estimated to be in care.
The researchers calculated that an additional 740,000 years of life might have
been saved if all the people with AIDS in the U.S. received appropriate treatment
on diagnosis.
Lead author Dr. Walensky said, “These findings underscore the importance of
expanded HIV testing and better linkage to care for people who are HIV-infected,
so that more of them can realize the life-extending benefits of HIV therapies.”
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