ATLANTA – An American diagnosed with the AIDS virus can expect to live for about 24 years on average, and the cost of health care over those two-plus decades is more than $600,000, new research indicates.
Both life expectancy and the cost of care have risen from earlier estimates, mainly because of expensive and effective drug therapies, said Bruce Schackman, the study’s lead author.
The research found that the average annual cost of care is about $25,200 – nearly 40 percent higher than a commonly cited estimate from the late 1990s.
The new research also updates other studies from the 1990s, when life expectancy for HIV-infected people was closer to 10 years.
The study could influence how much state and federal governments appropriate for HIV and AIDS care and prevention in the future, some HIV policy experts said.
“They’re going to have to take into account medical advances that have extended people’s lives,” agreed Schackman, assistant professor of public health at New York’s Weill Cornell Medical College.
The study appears in the November edition of the peer-reviewed journal, Medical Care.
A 1993 estimate of life expectancy for a symptomless person infected with HIV was less than seven years.
But since the mid-1990s, about two dozen HIV-fighting antiretroviral drugs have come onto the market that have essentially turned HIV from a death sentence into a chronic disease.
Physicians now understand life expectancy after HIV diagnosis to be two decades or more, and the new study supports that belief.
“It’s nice to see that in writing,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, co-director of Emory University’s Center for AIDS Research.
In their cost estimates, the researchers aimed high, basing their numbers on the best available drugs and the best standards of care. But that’s not always what’s provided, some HIV policy experts noted.
For example, a 2003 federal study concluded that only 55 percent of HIV patients who should have been on virus-fighting medications were actually getting them.
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