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Understanding Hiv/aids, Akobo Ojurin, Ibadan (2025)

20/04/2019

Disregard any Person or group claiming to have anyone that can Heal you of HIV / AIDS. THEY ARE SCAMMERS.

THERE IS NO CURE FOR HIV. IT CAN ONLY BE TREATED.

DISREGARD

DISREGARD

DISREHARD

BEWARE OF FRAUD

28/02/2018

There are many people claiming they have been cured of HIV. This is a false claim. Please disregard it. They are scammers. HIV can only be managed not cured. Thank you.

12/03/2017

I stopped Sensitization Concerning HIV/AIDS for a while because I thought most Nigerians know little about this disease, but now I know i was wrong. I got some calls these days which made me understand there are many people without full knowledge of this disease. We could say we have the social media and other internet platform at our disposal to learn many things, but we need to consider (digital divide) the people without the knowledge of this so called Technology. This has stimulated me to go to the uncivilized Areas to sensitize and help save lives of people in this respect. Many lives are in danger. HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence,we need to know its treatment is free. Its medication is free, If you are a victim you shall be treated with utmost priority. If you are infected and you are afraid to visit the hospital or you have anyone infected or having symptoms.You can contact me on these lines or send me a mail. I promise to help you free of charge and you will never hear your news anywhere. It shall be kept a secret. I need nothing from you, but your good healthy living
08161754352
07037728100
Abiolakakanfo@gmail.com

31/08/2016

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death among people living with HIV, accounting for one in five HIV-related deaths globally. In fact, the risk of developing tuberculosis is estimated to be more than 25 times greater for people living with HIV than those living without.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria is working to end AIDS and TB for good. Learn more about their work and with in Montreal on September 17 for a concert to end AIDS, TB and Malaria. Globalcitizen.org/Canada

30/08/2016

Depression increases risk of heart attack for adults with HIV

Major depression is associated with an increased risk of heart attack for middle-aged HIV-positive patients, investigators from the United States report in JAMA Cardiology. Overall, presence of a major depressive disorder (MDD) increased the risk of heart attack – acute myocardial infarction (AMI) – by almost a third. Use of antidepressants weakened the association between depression and heart attack risk, and there was no evidence that milder forms of depression – dysthymic disorders – were associated with an elevated risk of heart attack.

It’s already known that depression is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the general population. The present study is the first research to show that major depression is also a heart attack risk factor for patients with HIV.

“We report novel evidence suggesting that MDD is independently associated with AMI in the HIV-infected population,” comment the authors. “We found that MDD at baseline was associated with an increased risk for incident AMI over 5.8 years of follow-up. Specifically, after adjustment for demographics, CVD risk factors and HIV-specific factors, HIV-infected adults with MDD had a 30% greater risk for having an AMI than did HIV-infected adults without MDD.”

The investigators believe their research had identified a new target for cardiovascular disease prevention in HIV-positive patients that should be explored in further studies.

Improvements in treatment and care mean that most patients with HIV now have an excellent life expectancy. Diseases associated with older age are an increasingly important cause of illness and death in HIV-positive patients, and prevention of cardiovascular disease is a care priority.

Research in the general population has shown that individuals with a depressive disorders are up to 60% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease compared to individuals with good mental health.

Investigators from the Veterans Aging Cohort Study wanted to see if there was a similar relationship between depression and heart attack risk in patients with HIV.

They therefore designed a prospective study involving 26,144 HIV-positive patients who entered care between 1998 and 2003. Patients were followed between 2003 and 2009 to see if the presence of a major or minor depressive disorder at baseline increased the risk of heart attack during follow-up. The investigators adjusted their findings in several models to take account of traditional cardiovascular risk factors, HIV-related factors, co-infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV), drug use and use of antidepressants.

The majority of participants (>95%) were male and the average age at baseline was approximately 47 years.

A major depressive disorder is defined by psychiatrists as a period of at least two weeks of persistently low mood accompanied by symptoms such as feelings of worthlessness, anxiety, pessimism, impaired concentration, disturbed sleep, loss of interest in everyday activities, reduced energy, and sometimes, thoughts of death or suicidal feelings. On entry to the study, 19% of patients had a major depressive disorder with a further 9% having a milder form of depression.

Patients were followed for a median of 5.8 years. During this time, there were 490 incident heart attacks (2% of study population).

Patients with a major depressive disorder at baseline had an increased risk of heart attack compared to patients without major depression. The association was significant in models that took into account demographics (HR = 1.31; 95% CI, 1.05-1.62), cardiovascular risk factors (HR = 1.29; 95% CI, 1.04-1.60) and HIV-specific factors (HR = 1.30; 95% CI, 1.05-1.62).

The association was weakened but still of borderline significance when the investigators took into account other factors, such as HCV infection, substance abuse and haemoglobin level (HR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.00-1.56).

The authors also adjusted their results to take account of baseline antidepressant therapy. Overall, use of antidepressants meant that the association between major depression and heart attack was no longer significant.

There was no evidence that milder forms of depression increased the risk of heart attack.

The investigators suggest several reasons why major depression increased the risk of heart attack for patients with HIV, including:

Systemic inflammation.

Changes in the autonomic nervous system.

Poor health behaviours, such as smoking, a sedentary lifestyle and sub-optimal adherence to treatment.

Social isolation.

“We report novel evidence that HIV-infected adults with MDD have a greater for AMI than HIV-infected adults without MDD after adjustment for many potential confounders,” conclude the investigators. “There is a need for clinical trials designed to evaluate the effect of high-quality depression treatment on CVD risk markers and incident events in HIV-infected adults with depression.

24/07/2016

The a**lysis presented today was preliminary (data collection was only completed a month ago). Dabis said that further a**lyses will attempt to gain a better understanding of how results differed between men and women, and for people of different ages.

The researchers will try to clarify the reasons people did not link to care – does the explanation lie in the way health services are provided, individual factors or community stigma? They will seek to better understand the differences between the profile of individuals reached and not reached by interventions.

During discussion, Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina suggested that delays in linking to care could have meant that individuals with recent HIV infection disproportionately contributed to onward transmission. Moreover, it will be important to understand the impact of migration and s*xual networks which reach outside the study area, which may contribute to new HIV infections.

François Dabis said that, although the study was hypothesised to show an effect of TasP after four years of follow-up, it may be that it will take longer to have an impact on incidence, in light of the slowness of linkage to care.

Other delegates suggested that the intervention clusters may not have received a package of interventions that was sufficiently intensive, in comparison with the control clusters. For example a more intensive approach to help people link to care, such as home-based initiation of HIV treatment, could have had a greater impact.

Sheri Lippman of the University of California, chairing the session, commented that it may take more than technical solutions to deal with the structural barriers to engagement with care that exist.

04/07/2016

A combination of simple, routine blood tests may be able to predict which people living with HIV are especially vulnerable to neurocognitive decline, according to US research published in Clinical Infectious Diseases . People with high VACS (Veterans Aging Cohort) Index scores had an increased risk of experiencing a decline in neurocognitive function and were also significantly more likely to develop new neurocognitive problems.
“Changes in VACS Index correspond to changes in neurocognitive function over time in a large, well-characterized HIV-infected cohort,” write the authors.
Despite major advances in treatment and care, neurocognitive impairment (NCI) remains common in people with HIV, occurring in between 30% and 50% of individuals. In most people with HIV this is mild. Nevertheless, even milder forms of impairment can have a negative impact on day-to-day life.
It is therefore important to identify which people are at risk of developing neurocognitive impairment and also those with baseline impairment at high risk of further decline.
The VACS Index was developed as a marker of disease severity in people living with HIV. It is based on the results of blood tests that are performed as part of routine care, such as CD4 count, viral load, renal and liver function, anaemia and hepatitis C screening. A higher VACS Index score has consistently been associated with an increased risk of death in patients, hospitalisation and also diseases usually associated with older age, such as frailty, fragility fracture and low muscle strength.
Now investigators wanted to see if VACS Index score could predict neurocognitive change and incident neurocognitive impairment.
They therefore designed a study involving 655 adults living with HIV receiving care at the University of California, San Diego. Study participants were followed for up to six years.
Three outcomes were investigated:
The association between baseline VACS Index score and subsequent neurocognitive change.
Whether changes in VACS Index scores over time were correlated with changes in neurocognitive function.
Whether VACS Index scores predicted time to incident neurocognitive impairment in people with normal neurocognitive function at baseline.
Participants with major psychiatric disorders or brain injury were excluded from recruitment.
Neurocognitive function was assessed using a comprehensive battery of tests. Initial scores were converted in T scores adjusted for age, education, s*x and race. The adjusted T scores were then averaged to obtain global and domain T scores.
Participants had a mean age of 43 years, 83% were male, 60% were white, mean CD4 count was 346 cells/mm3, 67% had an AIDS diagnosis, 61% were taking antiretroviral therapy and 51% had an undetectable viral load. Three-quarters reported a history of substance abuse.
At baseline, 40% were assessed as having neurocognitive impairment. Median VACS Index score was 22. Participants with and without neurocognitive impairment were broadly comparable.
There was no significant association between baseline VACS Index score and neurocognitive change.
However, there was a significant association between higher VACS Index and worse global and domain neurocognitive performance, even after adjusting for potential confounders (p < 0.01).
Higher VACS Index was associated with poorer memory scores in people not taking antiretrovirals (p < 0.01) but not for people taking HIV therapy.
Analysis of the 60% of people with no neurocognitive impairment at baseline showed that higher baseline VACS Index scores were associated with increased chances of developing impairment (p < 0.01). After controlling for factors such as nadir CD4 count and baseline depression this association ceased to be significant. But in the time-dependent a**lyses, higher VACS Index scores were associated with a significantly increased risk of incident neurocognitive impairment (HR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.06-1.29, p < 0.01).
Study participants with higher VACS Index scores were significantly more likely to develop neurocognitive impairment compared to those with low (p < 0.01) and moderate (p < 0.01) VACS Index scores. Moreover, people with higher VACS Index scores were also significantly more likely than others to experience neurocognitive decline (p = 0.02).
“Overall, baseline VACS Index scores may not be a good predictor of neurocognitive change in the longer term. Changes in VACS Index scores, however, correspond to changes in neurocognition,” conclude the authors. “Having very high VACS Index scores might indicate a notable increased risk of neurocognitive decline and incident NCI. These findings support the VACS Index as a simple tool for identifying HIV-infected patients who are at high risk of NCI and might warrant further neurocognitive follow-up.”

11/06/2016

GLOBAL STATISTICS
17 million people were accessing antiretroviral therapy
36.7 million [34.0 million–39.8 million] people globally were living with HIV
2.1 million [1.8 million–2.4 million] people became newly infected with HIV
1.1 million [940 000–1.3 million] people died from AIDS-related illnesses
78 million [69.5 million–87.6 million] people have become infected with HIV since the start of the epidemic
35 million [29.6 million–40.8 million] people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic
People living with HIV
In 2015, there were 36.7 million [34.0 million–39.8 million] people living with HIV.
People living with HIV accessing antiretroviral therapy
As of December 2015, 17 million people living with HIV were accessing antiretroviral therapy, up from 15.8 million in June 2015 and 7.5 million in 2010.
46% [43–50%] of all adults living with HIV were accessing treatment in 2015, up from 23% [21–25%] in 2010.
49% [42–55%] of all children living with HIV were accessing treatment in 2015, up from 21% [18–23%] in 2010.
77% [69–86%] of pregnant women living with HIV had access to antiretroviral medicines to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies in 2015.
New HIV infections
New HIV infections have fallen by 6% since 2010.
Worldwide, 2.1 million [1.8 million–2.4 million] people became newly infected with HIV in 2015, down from 2.2 million [2 million–2.5 million] in 2010.
New HIV infections among children have declined by 50% since 2010.
Worldwide, 150 000 [110 000–190 000] children became newly infected with HIV in 2015, down from 290 000 [250 000–350 000] in 2010.
AIDS-related deaths
AIDS-related deaths have fallen by 45% since the peak in 2005.
In 2015, 1.1 million [940 000–1.3 million] people died from AIDS-related causes worldwide, compared to 2 million [1.7 million–2.3 million] in 2005.

11/06/2016

Activists say that a United Nations Political Declaration on Ending AIDS, due to be finalised this week at a UN High Level Meeting on Ending AIDS in New York, could exclude language recognising the critical importance of key populations for the prevention and treatment of HIV, unless sympathetic governments intervene to ensure the inclusion of language reaffirming the needs of marginalised and criminalised populations.
In particular, activists say that interventions by Russia, Iran, Indonesia and a group of Gulf States have resulted in the removal of references to the need to repeal discriminatory and punitive laws affecting s*x workers, people who use drugs and men who have s*x with men.
References to ensuring access to tailored HIV combination prevention services for key populations have also been removed, and an explicit list of key populations is missing from the draft declaration.
References to the burden of HIV infection in key populations in different regions of the world have been diluted, and key populations are referred to only in the context of risk, rather than as groups of people in especially high need of effective HIV prevention services and treatment.
Key populations have disproportionately high rates of HIV infection and yet, have poorer access to essential HIV services. For example, people who inject drugs are 24 times more likely to acquire HIV, s*x workers are ten times more likely to acquire HIV and transgender people are 18 times more likely to acquire HIV.
Key populations face criminalisation, discrimination and a lack of provision of essential evidence-based prevention and treatment services, and are increasingly left behind as the coverage of HIV treatment is scaled up. In Eastern Europe, for example, only 20% of people living with HIV are receiving antiretroviral treatment and half of all new infections are estimated to be occurring in people who inject drugs. Most governments in Eastern Europe express strong opposition to harm reduction measures that could limit HIV infection, continue to promote aggressive policing of drug users and publicly endorse discrimination against men who have s*x with men and transgender people.
“After 35 years of the AIDS epidemic, it is reprehensible that some governments would still rather criminalise communities and obstruct access to evidence based HIV services than work together to end this epidemic,” said George Ayala of the Global Forum on MSM & HIV. “We are demanding leaders that oppose this deadly approach to take a stand today, by requesting the Co-Chairs of the High Level Meeting to open the draft Declaration today for further negotiation. We believe evidence and human rights will carry the day—but only if politicians are willing to work, and to speak out for what is right.”
Activists are calling on the government representatives of the United States, European Union countries, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia to mount a last-ditch defence of the rights of key populations, by pushing for an inclusion of specific acknowledgement of the key populations affected by HIV and the burden of stigma, violence and discrimination faced by these groups. Activists are also calling for the needs of key populations to be addressed in all sections of the declaration that discuss strategies for ending the epidemic, and language concerning s*xual and reproductive health and rights of women and key populations to be retained.
UN human rights experts have also called for a strong focus on key populations and harm reduction for people who inject drugs in the final declaration.
In a statement issued last week , the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said “states must commit to removing the punitive frameworks that fuel mass incarceration, HIV epidemics, and negative health outcomes,” and recommendeds that the declaration “adopt a new target to prevent HIV among people who inject drugs, and commit to ensuring availability and access to evidence-based treatment, including harm reduction programmes.”
The draft declaration is designed to commit national governments to endorse the Fast-Track approach to achievement of the 90-90-90 targets, and to provide a framework for the global HIV response over the next five years. The UNAIDS 90-90-90 Fast-Track target calls on countries to reach the following goals:
90% of people living with HIV diagnosed by 2020
90% of diagnosed people on antiretroviral treatment by 2020
90% of people in treatment with fully suppressed viral load by 2020.
The declaration also commits national governments to work towards reducing TB-related deaths by 75% by 2020, and to reduce new infections among young women to less than 100,000 per year by 2020.
“Without commitments on advancing the response among marginalised and criminalised groups, the very goal of the declaration—to guide the world in ending AIDS as a global epidemic by 2030—will not be achieved,” said Asia Russell of Health GAP (Global Access Project).
Activists are calling on organisations to lobby their national government representatives and use social media platforms to express the strength of feeling on the issue. In particular they encourage advocates to "urge your government and missions in NYC to avoid rushing into approving a seriously flawed document," and to demand that "your delegations emphatically speak against weakened or misleading language or language that renders key populations invisible."

06/06/2016

European demonstration projects and opinions on PrEP
A meeting a month ago at the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) in Stockholm found that cost was regarded as the biggest barrier to the adoption of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) by European countries. Many regarded significant price reductions in the drugs used as a pre-condition for adopting PrEP.
The ECDC held the meeting to discuss considerations for PrEP implementation throughout Europe and invited clinicians, researchers, epidemiologists, community advocates and, significantly, a high proportion of representatives from various countries’ Ministries of Health – the people who would actually make recommendations on PrEP to their governments.
The ECDC conducted a survey of 31 European countries as part of the monitoring work it does on the implementation of the 2004 Dublin Declaration on fighting HIV in Europe and Central Asia. It found that 17 countries ranging from Portugal to Azerbaijan had demonstration projects of PrEP either in progress or planned.
It also asked: “What issues are limiting or preventing the implementation of PrEP in your country?” By far the most common issue cited was cost. Twenty-one out of the 31 countries considered the cost of PrEP drugs as a highly important limiting factor and only two considered it of low importance; the second most important limiting factor was the cost of service delivery, which 11 countries considered as highly important and again only two of low importance.
Compared with these, the medical or moral objections often used against PrEP were less often cited. While lower condom use as a possible consequence of PrEP was cited by 20 countries as of some importance only five thought it was of high importance and increases in STIs were cited by seven countries as a possibly highly-important consequence.
Other cost issues that the ECDC meeting highlighted as important included the fact that only in the UK and the Netherlands have thorough cost-effectiveness studies of PrEP been done and that even if models do show PrEP to be cost-effective, PrEP programmes will require a considerable initial spend before they start achieving significant-enough reductions in infections. There was general consensus that the barriers to rolling out PrEP would be considerably lower once drugs come off-patent and are available at generic prices.
The meeting looked at a number of other issues that might need to be addressed in order to make accessing PrEP easier in Europe.
One particularly important consideration is the sheer difference in healthcare systems from one country to another. This makes a standard European ‘template’ for adopting PrEP impossible, and requires each country to come up with its own answers.
Who, for instance, will provide PrEP? STI clinics? Community testing sites? Infectious disease physicians? Primary care physicians? Through online order schemes? Different arrangements and even laws already exist in different countries on who can conduct an HIV test and these are likely to affect PrEP provision too.

12/05/2016

HIV is undetectable in the pre-ejaculatory fluid of men taking suppressive antiretroviral therapy, investigators from the United States report in the online edition of AIDS . Approximately a fifth of men with an undetectable viral load in their blood had low-level HIV replication in their semen, but none were shedding virus in pre-ejaculate.
“Our study provides the first evidence that pre-ejaculatory s*xual secretions in men on [ART], unlike those from untreated men, do not contain detectable HIV,” comment the investigators.
There is now overwhelming evidence that men and women who are taking stable ART that suppresses HIV in blood to undetectable levels are extremely unlikely to transmit the virus to their s*xual partners. However, persistent HIV replication has been detected in the semen of men taking treatment that suppresses viral load in blood.
HIV has been detected in the pre-ejaculatory fluid – colloquially called pre-cum – of HIV-infected men not on ART and also in pre-ejaculatory samples obtained from ART-exposed monkeys. Pre-ejaculate is thought to be a possible source of HIV transmission.
Investigators in Boston wanted to see if HIV-replication persists in pre-ejaculatory fluid in the context of treatment that suppresses viral load in blood and also to establish if there is a relationship between detectable viral load in semen and viral shedding in pre-ejaculate.
Their study sample comprised 60 men. All were s*xually active and had been taking a stable antiretroviral regimen for at least three months.
Samples of pre-ejaculate, semen and blood were provided for viral load quantification. The men were also screened for urethral s*xually transmitted infections (STIs), urethritis and HSV infections.
Eight of the men had detectable viral load in their blood (range, 80-640,000 copies/ml) and were excluded from the principal a**lysis.
The remaining 52 men all had blood viral load below the limit of detection (40 copies/ml). Their median age was 43 years, median CD4 cell count was 518 cells/mm3, 96% reported s*x with other men, and 44% said they had had insertive unprotected a**l s*x within the past three months. None of the patients had a bacterial urethral STI, one had urethritis and one was shedding HSV-2 in semen.
Four of the men with detectable HIV in their blood were also shedding virus in their semen, viral load ranging between 40 and 96,000 copies/ml. One man in this group also had detectable virus in his pre-ejaculate (2,400 copies/ml).
Of the 52 men with undetectable viral load in their blood, ten (19%) had low level HIV replication in their semen (59 to 800 copies/ml). However, none had virus in their pre-ejaculatory fluid.
Both the patients with urethritis and the individual with seminal HSV-2 both had detectable HIV in their semen.
“Although HIV-1 RNA was detected in semen of men on stable ART with undetectable blood viral load, it was not detected in pre-ejaculatory secretions,” conclude the authors. “These data indicate that pre-ejaculatory fluid may not contribute to HIV transmission in men on ART, at least in men without ge***al infections

06/05/2016

Older HIV-positive patients have a high prevalence of multiple age-related problems, investigators from the United States report in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes . The research involved patients aged 50 years and older receiving outpatient care in San Francisco. Overall, 40% reported difficulties with daily activities, most reported loneliness, many had mild cognitive impairment and 30% had only poor to fair quality of life.
“This is one of the first studies to have evaluated a wide range of geriatric assessments among HIV-infected individuals in an outpatient clinical setting and provides a comprehensive overview of the health needs faced by the aging HIV-positive population,” write the authors. “We observed a high burden of clinically-concerning deficits in older HIV-infected adults across multiple domains, including functional impairment, falls, depression and social isolation.” The investigators believe their findings have implications for patient care, commenting “our results highlight the importance of systematically providing functional, social and mental health support for the aging HIV-infected population.”
Improvements in treatment and care mean that many patients with HIV are now living well into old age. Over half of HIV-positive adults in the United States are now aged 50 years and over. Previous research has shown that these patients frequently have multiple health problems and develop conditions associated with old age earlier than the traditional cut-off for old age – 65 years.
The Veterans Aging Cohort (VACS) Index, a prognostic tool based on markers associated with HIV and other health conditions, can be used to identify older HIV-positive patients with a high risk of illness and death. VACS Index score has also been associated with risk of fragility fractures, cognitive impairment and exercise capacity. However, less is known about its association with geriatric conditions, such as functional status.
Investigators therefore designed a cross-sectional observational study assessing the physical, cognitive, social and behavioural health of a large sample of older HIV-positive adults receiving outpatient care in San Francisco. A combination of geriatric and other assessments were used to assess psychosocial issues observed in older patients with HIV. The investigators hypothesised that both age and VACS Index would be associated with the geriatric conditions identified in the assessments.
Recruitment was between December 2012 and December 2014 and English-speaking patients aged 50 years and older were eligible to participate.
Assessments included questions on physical, social, mental and cognitive health. The investigators used a combination of assessments that addressed traditional geriatric conditions and also the issues faced by older HIV-positive patients.
Four broad areas of health were assessed:
Physical health and functioning; falls and walking speed (Activities of Daily Living [ADL] and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living [IADL]).
Social support, including physical and perceived support and loneliness.
Mental health, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder.
Behavioural and general health, including adherence to HIV therapy and overall quality of life.
A total of 359 patients were assessed. Most (85%) identified as male, two-thirds were in the men who have s*x with men (MSM) risk category, and approximately 60% were white. Approximately three-quarters had attended college. Half were receiving disability benefits and the majority had an annual income below $20,000. Most (85%) had been living with diagnosed HIV infection for ten years or over. As regards HIV-related markers, 82% had an undetectable viral load and over half had a CD4 cell count above 500 cells/mm3.
Median age was 56 years and two-thirds of patients were in their 50s. Patients aged 60 years and older were more likely to be white, college educated and to have a higher annual income when compared to younger participants.
The patients had a high burden of conditions associated with older age, with 41% reporting a fall in the previous year, almost 60% reported loneliness, half reported receiving low levels of social support and over a third met the criteria for mild cognitive impairment.
Patients aged 60 years and older were more likely to report problems with balance than patients in their 50s (47% vs. 33%). Prevalence of problems with physical health and functioning was similar in the two age groups (12%), but patients in their 60s had slower walking speed.
However, older patients reported less anxiety and had higher levels of adherence to their HIV treatment. Although older patients were more likely to rate their health-related quality of life as “good”, fewer reported that it was “very good” or “excellent”, compared to patients in their 50s (p = 0.04).
A higher VACS Index score – indicative of higher mortality risk – was associated with greater levels of dependence and IADL scores, i.e. falls and slower gait speed (p = 0.003).
“Our data add to the growing body of evidence that older HIV-infected adults are facing increasing medical, psychiatric and social complexity and help to provide insight into how this complexity varies in different age groups in older adults,” conclude the authors. “Our findings highlight the importance of taking a comprehensive approach to identify health issues facing older HIV-positive patients and the critical need to develop interventions to improve the quality of life and address the multifaceted needs of older HIV-infected patients.”

Understanding Hiv/aids

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