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HIV no longer a death sentence, Sydney conference told
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http://www.zeenews.com
Sydney, July 23: HIV infection is no longer a death sentence, with patients likely to have a "fairly robust" life expectancy if given the right drugs, a major HIV/AIDS conference in Australia heard Monday.
Michael Lederman, of Case Western Reserve University, has been treating HIV patients for more than 20 years and said he has seen such improvements that he believes the world could be on the cusp of ending the pandemic.
"I have been doing HIV care since 1983," he told a press conference at the fourth International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney. "And in those days I would regularly see my patients die. Life expectancy was short.
"I wouldn't even tell my patients who enjoyed cigarettes to stop smoking because it didn't seem to make a lot of sense if we were talking about survival in terms of months and a few years.
"But now we are talking about a fairly robust life expectancy." While the life expectancy for a person infected with HIV was not quite the same as normal, the major health risks for his patients were the same as those facing the general population such as heart disease, Lederman said.
"So the future is a little uncertain but it is so bright, so bright compared to what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago," he said.
Lederman's comments echoed those of other high profile speakers at the conference, who have said that powerful anti-retroviral drugs now in use can prevent people from dying from the disease for decades.
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