40 YEARS LATER HIV IS STILL A THING
The landscape of HIV is changing.
Incredible progress has been made over the past four decades of the HIV epidemic. Gone are the “bad old days” of the epidemic when HIV was the leading cause of death for adults in the US between the ages of 25-44.1 We’re now in an era where people living with HIV can expect to live a long and healthy life. Currently, it’s estimated that the proportion of people living with HIV aged 50 years or older will increase from 28% in 2010 to 73% 2030.2,3
HIV treatment has transitioned from handfuls of pills taken multiple times per day, to simplified once-daily regimens, to where we are currently, with long-acting treatment options that allow for doses taken months apart. We’ve also seen medicines for HIV prevention emerge to provide us with a formidable tool to fight the epidemic.
View Dr. Smith’s full conversation with Scientific American here:
References:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Update: Mortality Attributable to HIV Infection Among Persons Aged 25-44 Years — United States, 1994. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00040227.htm. Accessed September 2022.
- AIDS info. Available at: http://aidsinfo.unaids.org/. Accessed September 2022
- Smit et al., Lancet Infect Dis 2015 Jul;15(7):810-8). Global AIDS Update. Available at: https://aids2020.unaids.org/report/. Accessed September 2022
