Late Diagnosis - More AIDS Deaths
posted: 11/04/2011
12 years of UK HIV data shows that people diagnosed late with HIV (when the CD4 count was under 350) are 6 times more likely to die of AIDS than other people with HIV.Three quarters of all the people who die with an AIDS diagnosis were diagnosed with HIV late – when their CD4 cell count was below 350.
The researchers who gave this news to the British HIV Association Conference in Bournemouth last week, used the UK’s national HIV surveillance system data and death certificates at the Office of National Statistics, for the years 1997 to 2008.
While HIV deaths have plunged since combination treatments began in the mid 1990s, over 500 people with HIV die each year, and the HIV death rate is still five times higher than for the general population.
Over these 12 years, almost half the deaths were due to AIDS (49%). The proportion varied during this time but is not falling steadily, as we would hope.
The researchers milked the data by using advanced statistical tools. That is how they discovered that being diagnosed when the CD4 is below 350 makes people six times more likely than others with HIV to die of AIDS. They also estimate that 74% of all AIDS deaths are explained by late diagnosis. Even among people infected in the UK, 66% of AIDS deaths are linked to late diagnosis.
- Men were more likely than women to die of AIDS.
- But men who have sex with men were less likely to die than heterosexually infected men and women, whether this was in Africa, the UK or anywhere else.
- Injecting drug users had a much higher risk of death than all others.
The most common causes of AIDS deaths were PCP (a type of pneumonia common with advanced HIV illness), other AIDS-related pneumonias, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, TB and neuro-cerebral causes.
These findings make very clear how important it is to reduce late diagnosis – NorthWest England is the worst region in England for late diagnosis.
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