Drugs add 13 years to average life of HIV patient

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cocktails of HIV drugs help patients live an average of 13 years longer -- if they are lucky enough to get them, researchers reported on Thursday.

A person who started taking the drugs at age 20 could, on average, expect to live another 43 years, the researchers report in the Lancet medical journal.

They looked at several studies of patients living in the United States, Canada and several European countries who received drug combinations known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART.

Robert Hogg of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada and colleagues looked at 43,000 patients in 14 different studies.

"Between 1996-99 and 2003-05, there was a gain in life expectancy for those at age 20 years of about 13 years; similar gains in life expectancy in those aged 35 years were also seen," they wrote.

"A person starting combination therapy can expect to live about 43 years at 20 years of age, about two-thirds as long as the general population in these countries." Average life expectancy for a 20-year-old without HIV in those countries would be 80, they said.

Patients treated later on in their infections and those infected via injected drug use did not live as long as those treated early, the researchers found.

The AIDS virus infects an estimated 33 million people globally and has killed about 25 million since the pandemic started in the 1980s.