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AIDS Drugs Have Saved 3 Million Years of Life in the United States

	A. David Paltiel, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Administration, co-authors study showing AIDS drugs have saved three million years of life, on the 25th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS.

This year, the United States federal government will spend $21 billion for HIV/AIDS research, treatment, prevention, and related activities. In the July 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers at Yale, Harvard, Cornell, and Boston University indicate that is the expenditure is paying off - and more so than previously thought.

The investigators estimated the survival benefits of AIDS drugs using national surveillance and efficacy data for newly diagnosed adult AIDS patients under care in the United States from 1989 to 2003. They divided those years into “eras” corresponding to specific advances in AIDS care, and then used a computer simulation model to estimate per-person survival time for each era, compared to the absence of treatment. They estimated a total survival benefit of 2.8 million years in the United States. They also estimated that drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV have averted 2,900 infant infections, saving an additional 137,000 years of life.

The study appears as the world reflects on the 25th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS and the 10th anniversary of the use of multi-drug antiretroviral combinations for the treatment of HIV infections.  In an accompanying editorial, Sten H. Vermund, M.D., Ph.D., of Vanderbilt University noted the challenges that lie ahead. “If we address systematically the barriers to testing, care, and prevention,” he concluded, “then future modelers will describe the next 15-year period as having saved hundreds of millions of life-years, not just in North America but around the globe.”  Study co-author A. David Paltiel, Ph.D., associate professor of public health in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale agrees, “Globally, the numbers are staggering. This analysis makes the strongest case yet for population-wide HIV screening and universal access to lifesaving therapies, both here in the United States and abroad.”  Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., Director of the National Institutes of Health states, “This study clearly shows the dramatic impact that sustained investment in biomedical research can have in improving the lives of Americans.”

Other authors on the study include lead author Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., M.P.H. of the Harvard Medical School, Elena Losina of Boston University School of Public Health, Lauren Mercincavage of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Bruce Schackman of Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Paul Sax of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Milton Weinstein of Harvard School of Public Health.

Citation: Journal of Infectious Diseases 194:11-19, 2006.