How well does AIDS treatment work?

Source: "HIV drugs 'add 13 years of life'"
BBC News, 24 July 2008

"Life expectancy for people with HIV has increased by an average of 13 years since the late 1990s thanks to better HIV treatment, a study says." The article states that "a person now diagnosed at 20 years old could expect to live for another 49 years. But the Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration, which includes scientists from across Europe and Northern America, warned this was still short of the life expectancy for the wider population which stands at about 80." The study, conducted by a team from Bristol University, reviewed the experience of more than 43,000 HIV infected patients.

Comment: Maybe because I am old, it seems to me that the loss of eleven years of life expectancy is a very serious health risk. And of course, 49 years of treatment with anti-retrovirals is expensive and unpleasant. Moreover, we don't have a cohort of people who have been on these drugs for four decades so we don't really know what the side effects might be. Moreover, the death resulting from the final failure of the treatment may be worse that the alternative to be expected by a non-HIV infected person.

The anti-retroviral treatments are a spectacular scientific triumph which came faster than I would have expected. But that triumph should not be misunderstood. HIV infection is still a very unfortunate occurrence to be avoided if at all possible. JAD