Aging AIDS epidemic raises new health questions

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_AGING_AMERICA_AIDS_CONFERENCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-26-15-49-58

WASHINGTON (AP) -- AIDS is graying. By the end of the decade, the government estimates, more than half of Americans living with HIV will be over 50. Even in developing countries, more people with the AIDS virus are surviving to middle age and beyond.

That's good news - but it's also a challenge. There's growing evidence that people who have spent decades battling the virus may be aging prematurely. At the International AIDS Conference this week, numerous studies are examining how heart disease, thinning bones and a list of other health problems typically seen in the senior years seem to hit many people with HIV when they're only in their 50s.

"I'm 54, but I feel older," said Carolyn Massey of Laurel, Md., who has lived with HIV for nearly 20 years.

"When I hear young people talk about, `Well you get HIV and you take your drugs and you'll be all right' - that's just not the truth," she said. "This is a lifelong thing we're talking about, and it unfolds every day on you."

[struggle4progress]

1. Growing old with HIV

By Lena H. Sun,

A person living with the AIDS virus once had no hope of growing old. But within the next eight years, more than half of all Americans with the disease are likely to be over 50.

Rayford Kytle, in other words, could soon be a typical person living with HIV.

At 65, he is a gay man who has been HIV positive for more than 30 years. He exercises regularly, watches what he eats, and doesn’t smoke. But he’s also had to have both hips replaced. And every 18 months, a surgeon gives him injections to compensate for fat loss in his face, he said, “so I don’t look like a walking skull.”

The hip surgeries are related to his disease. The injections, which cost about $1,500, are fillers to counteract the facial wasting that is a side effect of the early, more toxic anti-HIV drugs ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/growing-old-with-hiv/2012/07/26/gJQAAwWTCX_story.html