Aging and HIV – Things You Should Know

Aging and HIV – Things You Should Know

While many of you weren’t looking, HIV gave us another challenge: aging.

The numbers of people over 50 with HIV infection have been increasing, due in part to the fact that people with the disease are living longer. Many of those with AIDS whose lives were spared with the advent of new treatment drugs and regimens in the mid-1990s are now in their fifties or older. That’s the good news.

There’s another side to this, however. Significant numbers of older adults are becoming newly infected. Some 14 percent of new HIV diagnosed cases in New York City are among those 50 and older. Because of these dynamics of the disease – large numbers of older adults placing themselves at risk of infection along with a growing number of those with the disease who are getting older – those over 50 now account for nearly a third of the 100,000 people in the city who are HIV-positive.

At Village Care of New York we find ourselves uniquely positioned to confront this problem because we are a long-standing senior care provider in our community, and we also started some of the very first AIDS services in the city going back more than 20 years. We’ve been alerting people about the growing problem of aging and AIDS over the past four years, but it’s a problem that continues to confound care providers with mounting numbers of HIV-positive seniors.

Last week, we sponsored a major health forum and conference on HIV and Aging, which was held at Rivington House, our residential skilled nursing facility for persons living with HIV/AIDS. More than 50 clinicians and providers attended, meeting with experts on HIV and aging such as Dr. Jeanine Brookhardt-Murray from Harlem United, Stephen Karpiak of ACRIA – the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America and Rivington House’s own medical director, Dr. Sheree Starret.

Rivington House, originally a place populated mostly by younger individuals facing almost certain death, now is a place where many people come and are stabilized and treated. There too, we find more older adults today – 25 percent of the residents are over 55.

There are a number of reasons why HIV is increasing among older adults. Stacey Gladstone, a nurse educator in Village Care’s Certified Home Health Agency, lists these, among others:

To complicate matters, older adults are often diagnosed and treated late, Stacey says, because doctors aren’t attuned to seniors being at risk and because some AIDS symptoms are similar to general aging difficulties. Older adults are also at greater risk when exposed to HIV because their immune systems are apt to be less vigorous.

If you’re an older adult, you probably need to raise your awareness of your risk for HIV infection. Drug users sharing needles and those having unprotected homosexual and heterosexual sex are particularly at risk. You should take note of the fact that ACRIA’s recent landmark study, Research on Older Adults with HIV, found conclusively that heterosexual contact is the predominant method of HIV transmission among people over 50.

What should you do?

Ask you doctor to be tested and re-tested regularly, especially if you are sexually active or using drugs and don’t assume you are risk free even if you’re in a stable relationship. Use condoms.

Resources:

SAGE, 305 Seventh Avenue, (212) 741-2247, sageusa.org.

Village Care of New York, 154 Christopher Street, (212) 337-5600, vcny.org.

Centers for Disease Control, http://www.cdc.gov/hiv.

NYS AIDS Institute, http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/aids.

NYC Department of Health, http://home2.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/ah/ahbasic.shtml.