Life expectancy in HIV-positive persons in Switzerland: matched comparison with general population. AIDS
Gueler et al. analyzed life expectancy in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study 1988–2013 and compared life expectancy across levels of education with life expectancy in the general Swiss population, using matched controls from the Swiss National Cohort. 16’532 HIV-positive patients from the Swiss HIV Cohort Study and 927’583 residents from the Swiss National Cohort were included.
The proportion of patients who died during follow-up declined from 65.1% among patients enrolled in the monotherapy era to 2.4% among those enrolled in the most recent combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) era. In the most recent cART era, life expectancy at age 20 years was 52.7 years among participants with compulsory education, compared to 60.0 years among those with higher education. Only slight increases were observed in the general population, from 62.3 to 63.0 years overall, and from 61.1 to 61.5 years in people with compulsory education, and from 65.4 to 65.6 years in people with higher education.
In the most recent cART period, HIV-positive people continued to have an estimated life expectancy that was lower than their peers from the general population. Life expectancy in highly educated HIV-positive patients was similar to the life expectancy of individuals from the general population with compulsory education only. Male sex, smoking, injection drug use, and low CD4+cell counts at enrolment were independently associated with mortality.
In conclusion, the study-results suggest that life expectancy among HIV-positive persons could be further improved and educational inequalities reduced by earlier start of cART and effective smoking-cessation programs tailored to the HIV-positive population.