February 4, 2013 Mortality Rates Among People With HIV, Long on
the Wane, Continue to Drop Even nearly two decades into the
modern antiretroviral (ARV) era, the risk of death continues to
drop for people living with HIV, aidsmap reports. Publishing
their report in HIV Medicine, researchers from the Swiss HIV
Cohort Study examined records of 16,134 citizens receiving HIV
care between 1988 and 2010, of whom 5,023 (31 percent) died. In
the era preceding ARVs, 1988–1995, 78 percent of the deaths were
caused by AIDS, a figure that fell to 15 percent in the period
spanning 2005 and 2010. At its peak in 1992, AIDS-related
mortality reached a rate of 11 per 100 person-years and then
plummeted to 0.144 by 2006. Mortality due to non-AIDS-related
causes dropped from 1.74 per 100 person-years in 1996 to 0.776
in 2003 and to 0.26 in 2010. Between 2005 and 2009, 259 people
(5 percent) died, at a median age of 47, resulting in a
mortality rate of 1.25 per 100 person-years. About 45 percent of
this group was coinfected with