Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Newsday - July 29, 1994
Laurie Garrett. Staff Writer
The larger study, based on 111 male hemophiliacs in England, suggests that up to 25 percent of young men who become infected, but who do not have AIDS, can expect to live 20to 25 years. The smaller study, outlined in a companion commentary written by California state health officials, was more conservative, suggesting that 15 percent would live up to 20 years.
Both studies, presented in today's British Medical Journal, are mathematical models based on observations of subtle, incremental changes in the men's immune systems.
The reasons for the differences in survival rates are not clear.
Earlier research on gay men in San Francisco showed that the mean time following infection and before the onset of AIDS was 10 to 12 years. Survival in other key groups - particularly African men and women - is far shorter, with some dying within two to three years after infection.
The new research contained some strong caveats, however: Both papers deal only with men, offering no basis for projecting female survival; and, most important, both are mathematical models that can only be proved after the passage of a decade.
For 11 years researchers from the School of Medicine, London, closely monitored subtle changes in the men's immune systems - particularly in their CD4 counts, which decline sharply as people infected with HIV grow sicker. The British team, led by Dr. Andrew Phillips, concluded from the CD4 evidence that a minority of them worsen at a snail's pace.
"We have used 11 years of CD4 lymphocyte count experienced in 111 hemophilic men to forecast the probability of survival free of AIDS up to 25 years after infection with HIV," the British researchers write. "The results suggest that such prolonged survival is likely in about a quarter of patients."
Based on similar mathematical methods used to analyze a group of gay men in San Francisco who have been closely monitored since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, California State Health Officer George Rutherford came up with the 15 percent figure. The number of people being studied was not stated.
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