Antiretroviral treatment has increased the life expectancy of people living with HIV in British Columbia but a new study shows it is significantly lower for women than men.
The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS research paper, published in the peer-reviewed Lancet Public Health, points to an immediate need to address factors such as unemployment and unstable housing that adversely affect the health of women with HIV.
The provincewide expansion of antiretroviral treatment combined with the STOP HIV/AIDS program has increased the life expectancy for all, but epidemiologist Katherine Kooij, the paper’s lead author, says it’s “worrying” the improvement isn’t as strong among women.
She says the difference is suspected to be due to environmental or social structural factors such as barriers to accessing health care, unemployment, poverty, unstable housing, stigma and discrimination.
The research paper shows the life expectancy for 20-year-old men living with HIV between 2012 and 2020 rose to 68 years old while for women it only increased to 61 years old.
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Previously, life expectancy among those with HIV from 1996 to 2001 was only 44 for men and 42 for women.
Researchers also found that women with HIV had a 33 per cent higher risk of death from noncommunicable diseases such as kidney, liver, and lung disease than men with HIV.
The vast majority of those in B.C. being treated for HIV are men, according to the study that tracked 11,738 men and 2,534 women.
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