A question about HIV infection.

[trumad]

I haven't really kept up on the treatment and news of HIV care---

The question I have is--- can a person live a long and pretty normal life with the disease? Magic Johnson has had it since 1991 and he appears pretty healthy. Will he live to be an old man?

[NMDemDist2]

1. yes now you can live with the diease for a long time if you have the $$$ for

treatment

Andrew Sullivan has been HIV+ for over 25 years and he's doing fine too

edit for stupid typo

[trumad]

3. A full life---

Is it a large dose of treatment per day?

[NMDemDist2]

4. the treatments today are much less life altering

in the past, you'd have to take a pill (or several) every 4 hours NO MATTER WHAT

you'd have to get up in the middle of the night, every night

it is a lot of pills still IIRC but not so often

[LostinVA]

9. No -- only one pill a day now

Atripla.

As per an HIV counselor/activist friend.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Yes.

It is treatable. Not everyone who has the virus will actually get AIDS.

[sharp_stick]

5. As long as you continue treatment you can live a long time

Like a lot of cancers though, it's still incurable and you will likely die from it eventually. But, it is no where near as lethal as it was even 10 years ago and drug companies and the FDA treat it as a chronic condition now and not a sure fire death sentence.

[Taverner]

6. As long as you keep taking the meds

You can live.

[Warpy]

7. HIV has become a chronic, progressive disease

instead of an immediate death sentence if one can afford the treatment.

We don't know the upper limit to life with HIV. We do know that central nervous system complications do occur even with treatment, since most of the drugs don't cross the blood/brain barrier.

For people without those complications, their lives will probably be shortened by both the virus and by the treatments to suppress it. They may live decades beyond what they would have had without treatment, though. The success of treatment is also determined by how early it is begun.

The good news today is "Many HIV doctors now believe that provided a person with HIV receives effective anti-HIV treatment before the immune system has severely damaged by the virus; and that a person takes their drugs properly and are able to tolerate them, then they could live a more or less normal life span."

More info at http://www.aidsmap.com/en/docs/838DDDA5-614F-488A-BE41-BA4DBE1AA4EC.asp

One of the things that contributes toward a negative response to the drugs is tobacco smoking: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/540884

[bigscott]

8. the treatment options

are much less burdensome than they used to be - you can actually get treated with 1-2 pills per day (compared to 20-40 pills per day in the 80's). Of course you have to be able to tolerate the treatment (side effects can be terrible and disfiguring) and you have to be able to afford it (most are not yet generic). But you CAN live a long time with this disease. Unfortunately this has led to complacency among the young who have not watched DOZENS of their friends and family die horrible deaths. AIDS still kills - safe sex is of primary importance

[Arkansas Granny]

10. You make a very important point. Just because HIV can be treated

doesn't mean it can be taken lightly. Teaching safe sex (not just abstinence) is very important. Many people criticized me at the time, but when my kids got to the age when I thought they might soon become sexually active I talked to all of them about HIV/AIDS and kept a supply of condoms in the medicine cabinet. As they disappeared, I replenished them with no questions asked. I don't know if they were all used for their intended purpose or how many of them ended up as water balloons, but my kids and many of their friends knew where to find them.

[renate]

11. something you said may be useful to parents

As nonjudgmental as a parent who provides condoms to their kids would necessarily be, I think a lot of kids would be shy about actually taking them and using them because then their parents would know for sure that they were having sex. I know I would never have used them if my mom was checking up on the supply, openminded though she was.

Saying "I don't know whether you're going to use them for sex or as water balloons, or letting your friends have them, but whatever... they're here if you need them" would be a hint that we wouldn't necessarily assume the kids were having sex, so they wouldn't need to be shy.

It'll be a while before I need to do this (gulp! I can't even imagine it right now... but it's better than imagining my kids having babies when they're teenagers), but I'll keep your "water balloon" comment in mind.

[Arkansas Granny]

17. With four kids (and some of their friends) likely to be using them

they probably figured that I couldn't really track down who was using them, not to mention that as a single parent I was likely to use them, too. We also had several gay and lesbian friends who openly discussed the subject with the kids and also urged them to always use protection. We had lost friends to AIDS (this was in the 80's and 90's), so the kids knew that this was something to be taken seriously.

[LeftyMom]

15. That is a brilliant idea.

Hope you don't mind if I steal it when my kid's older.

[Arkansas Granny]

18. Use anything that works. It's just part of raising them to be

responsible adults.

[Samurai_Writer]

20. I did the same thing

My son was constantly handing out condoms to his friends and urging them to use them, because he knew he always had a steady supply of them.

Ironically, my son is the only one of his group of friends that did NOT get a girl pregnant in high school. Guess his friends should have used those condoms he was handing out.

[Warpy]

16. I've got a friend who was diagnosed 17 years ago

His disease was advanced, though, and I'm afraid he hasn't got much longer.

Of course, I said the same thing two years ago.

The lesions in his brain have affected his speech and coordination. It's sad.

[MikeE]

12. I'm living proof

I've known that I've been positive for over 10 years and was probably infected at least 10 years before that. I am healthier than most of the people I know that aren't positive.

[trumad]

13. Is it a pill a day and are there any side effect?

BTW: Welcome to DU.

[noonwitch]

14. Good for you!

If they don't find a cure, I hope that they can find a way to treat it like diabetes, which in the early 1900s was a death sentence, too.

But I like your positive attitude.

[Samurai_Writer]

19. I have a friend who was diagnosed in 1986

He's been on every drug cocktail, both legitimate and black-market, known for HIV. You would never suspect he was HIV+. He's now in his mid-40s and still going strong.

[LeftishBrit]

21. Yes, some people live a very long time, especially with modern treatment

According to Wikipedia:

'A computer based study in 2006 projected that following the 2004 United States treatment guidelines gave an average life expectancy of an HIV infected individual to be 32.1 years from the time of infection if treatment was started when the CD4 count was 350/µL.<93> This study was limited as it did not take into account possible future treatments and the projection has not been confirmed within a clinical cohort setting.'

Even without treatment, many people don't develop symptoms until ten or more years after infection; in some cases up to twenty years.

The British politician Chris Smith has apparently been known to be HIV-positive since 1987.