WEDNESDAY, Dec. 19 (HealthDay News) -- A new study finds that
HIV patients who receive good care but who smoke lose more years
of life to smoking than to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The
findings show the importance of including quit-smoking
counseling in long-term HIV care, the Danish researchers said.
They looked at nearly 3,000 HIV patients who were treated in
Denmark from 1995 to 2010 and received well-organized care with
free access to antiretroviral therapy. The researchers found
that more than 60 percent of the deaths that occurred among the
patients were associated with smoking rather than HIV. They also
found significant differences in life expectancy between HIV
patients who smoked and nonsmokers. For example, a 35-year-old
patient who smoked had a life expectancy approaching 63 years,
compared with more than 78 years for a nonsmoking patient who
was the same age, according to the study, which appears online
Dec. 19 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The loss of
years of life associate