HIV-Infected Patients' Life Expectancy Increased by 13 Years
By Chantal Britt
July 25 (Bloomberg) -- HIV-infected patients in North America and Europe are living at least 13 years longer on average as a result of combination drug therapies introduced in the mid-1990s, according to a study in the journal Lancet.
A 20-year-old patient taking the drugs in 2005 could expect to live to 69.4 years of age, said researchers led by Robert Hogg of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver. When this type of therapy began in 1996, a 20- year-old could only expect to live to 56.1 years, the research concluded.
The data, gleaned from 14 studies, was released in advance of the world's largest biennial meeting on AIDS research, scheduled to begin Aug. 3 in Mexico City. The sooner patients received combination treatments after diagnosis, the longer they lived, The Lancet report said.
``These figures are startling and will surely help clinicians raise the hopes and expectations of patients,'' said David Cooper from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, in a commentary accompanying the study.
In 1996, researchers began combining use of three existing families of drugs that fought the disease in different ways in order to reduce the virus's ability to mutate and survive in the body. Before the new therapies were introduced, patients often developed lasting resistance to individual drugs.
About 33 million people were living with HIV last year and 2.1 million people died from the illness. The goal of HIV therapy is to reduce blood levels of the virus as low as possible for as long as possible to slow the disease's progress.
Later Treatment
The Lancet report also said that patients treated later in their infection throughout the study had an average total life expectancy of 52.4 years, compared with 70.4 years among patients treated earlier in their disease. Women with HIV had longer life expectancies than men, which may be because they generally start treatment earlier, the researchers said.
Hogg's work looked at 43,355 HIV-infected patients, of whom 2,056 had died. Hogg worked as part of the Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration, which included researchers in Canada, the U.K., France, Switzerland, the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Europe's largest drugmaker, and the U.K. Medical Research Council sponsored Hogg's paper.
``These advances in treatment have transformed HIV from being a fatal disease, which was the reality for patients before the advent of combination treatment, into a long-term chronic condition,'' Hogg said in the study.
[ 本帖最后由 bulaohu 于 2008-7-26 13:00 编辑 ]
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请楼主三思帖子的标题,严重涉及道德问题
[ 本帖最后由 Guevara4Ever 于 2008-7-26 21:31 编辑 ]
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楼主嘴挺贱的。。。。。
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我就是买了研制抗HIV的医药公司的股票，给他们出钱出力，有问题吗！
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题目我改了，希望楼主能多了解一些关于HIV的常识，改变对HIV患者的偏见。
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每个人都有错误和冲动，体谅他人吧
每个生命都值得尊重
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不止这些， 刚生下来的BABY有罪吗？穷困地区卖血度日的人们有罪吗？被欺骗感情的人也有罪吗？
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大家错误理解了，lz本意是，如果艾滋病人活得岁数越大，传染的人就越多。何况这个世界现在人口太多。非洲有一种很严重的传染病，传染上一周就差不多要死亡，所以这种病就得不到广泛的传播，原因就是，病人还没有来得及把病传染给别人就已经死了。其实艾滋病人活得越短，把病传染给别人的机会就越少，难道不是吗？
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这个不光是看结果的问题，还有伦理问题。照你这么说，直接把现在所有的艾滋病人都杀了是最好的解决方法了。可惜这不是大多数人能接受的观念。
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如果得HIV的是你的家人，或是你自己，你还嫌13年太长吗？
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除了极少数故意的人，绝大多数HIV携带者并不会故意去让别人染病；HIV病毒只能通过体液交换传播，所以他们可以正常地生活在我们当中。在我看来，流言和无根据的恐慌才是严重的传染病。
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