MEDICAL UPDATE: Survival Of Men And Women With AIDS

MEDICAL UPDATE: Survival Of Men And Women With AIDS

Being Alive Newsletter, Being Alive/Los Angeles - October 1992
Mark Katz MD and reported by Jim Stoecker

A recent Journal of Infectious Diseases included a study out of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Researchers there looked at ten years worth of data (1981-1991) on the survival of men and of women with a diagnosis of AIDS. This study confirmed what we have heard before: over the ten year period, the median survival of women (the point in time after diagnosis when half the group studied were living and half were dead) was shorter than that of men. For women, median survival over the ten years studied was 11.1 months, while for men it was 14.6 months.

Certainly, in the early years of the epidemic, many women's HIV disease remained undetected, since they were not thought to be at risk. In addition, proportionately more women than men were drug users whose health was compromised by other conditions. Finally, in the early years, infected women had less access to health care than infected men. All of these are possible explanations for the difference in median survival.

The study also looked at the median survival of those on antiviral therapy (AZT or ddI). For women on antivirals, median survival was 19 months. If not on antivirals, median survival for women dropped to 6 months. For men, median survival was 21.8 months on antivirals vs 14 months if not using antivirals. This seems to support the belief that antiviral therapy prolongs survival. Further, the study data shows that for women and men on antivirals, the difference in median survival is no longer statistically significant (19 months vs 21.8 months). This seems to say that, given equal access to care, equal access to information and available options, there may be no difference between the survival of men and of women.

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