People with HIV before age 10 years

Patients infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) age between 10 and 15 years faster than the normal population due to several factors, such as side effects of drugs used and the waste of the virus itself.

The acceleration of the normal physiological process of aging system of people with HIV is one of the subjects 'hot' specialists who study AIDS, explained Dr. Josep Maria Gatell, Chief of Infectious Diseases and AIDS of Hospital Clinic Barcelona . Gatell, along with Dr. Laura Waters, Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton (UK), and Dr. Xavier Forns, MD Consultant of Hepatology Clinic Hospital, presented the sixteenth edition of the International AIDS Symposium, to be held tomorrow Castelldefels (Barcelona).

According Gatell, antiretroviral therapy normalizes much infection in AIDS patients but it must analyze the patient's life, and that patients make an aging population and makes it "more quickly than that indicated by your ID" he explained. "As a result, have faster and more often age-related complications, such as cardiovascular disease, stroke or stroke-some varieties of cancer or a neuro-cognitive impairment.

HIV Health

As regards the treatment of infection, antiretroviral therapy is now becoming easier and better tolerated, added the specialist, but has indicated that it should be for life, representing an expenditure of between 7,000 and 8,000 euros year.

Asked if the economic crisis affect the continuity of these expensive treatments, the medical expert has held that "probably will ask us to take the greatest cost-efficiency", which is made possible by the score of existing drugs on the market treat AIDS.

In addition to premature aging of the HIV infected, the meeting will also address how to treat patients who also have hepatitis C is also a situation experienced by between 30% and 40% of AIDS patients in Spain.

Dr. Xavier Forn explained that in a few months have medications that can directly inhibit the life cycle of hepatitis C, and that associated with standard therapy for treatment of the disease, is expected to increase very significantly the cure rate.

Until now, getting existing treatments to cure between 40 and 50% of patients with hepatitis C, a rate that is expected to increase in some specific virus of this disease and who have not been treated previously.

People with HIV

Gatell noted that "the patient with HIV and hepatitis C are two problems which enhance each other, so care must be taken in parallel and simultaneously managing both diseases."

New drugs to combat hepatitis C will mean an added cost of between 6,000 and 8,000 per year although in this case Forns explained that "progress has been made in predicting the response of patients and in 12 weeks you can assess whether the disease is on the road to healing. "

In Spain, there are an estimated 130,000 people infected with HIV, of which 30% do not know that they are therefore more likely to transmit the virus to others.

This proportion is even higher in the former countries of Eastern Europe, where two of every three people infected do not know, so that neither medical nor take precautions to prevent further transmissions. This bag of people unfamiliar with the disease are responsible for the transmission of up to 70% of new cases, so that reasons of public health to improve diagnostic tests, as in the UK when it occurs a traffic accident.