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Blacks with HIV have higher 10-year, all-cause mortality
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Black men and women initiating ART had a greater 10-year, all-cause mortality compared with other races and ethnicity groups, according to new data.
“A subsequent investigation into the causes of death would be invaluable to tease out the relative contributions of AIDS-related and non-AIDS-related mortality to the disparity described in this study,” researchers wrote in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Catherine R. Lesko, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues followed patients initiating ART at eight medical centers in the Centers for AIDS Research Network of Integrated Clinical Systems from January 1998 through December 2011. The analysis included 10,017 patients with HIV who were followed from therapy initiation, administrative censoring after 10 years of therapy, or the end of the study period. The researchers calculated the 10-year risk for all-cause mortality.
The median follow-up time was 4.7 years. Across 51,121 person-years of follow-up, 1,224 patients died, resulting in an overall crude 10-year mortality risk of 20.2% (95% CI, 19.2%-21.3%). The overall crude mortality rate was 2.39 deaths per 100 person-years. The crude 10-year mortality risk was 27% among black men and 25% for black women vs. 16.8% for white men and 17.5% for white women. The mortality risk among black men was 7.2% (95% CI, 4.3%-10.1%) greater than among white men, and among black women the risk was 7.9% (95% CI, 3.9%-12%) greater.
“These results serve as a call to action to identify modifiable factors that contribute to these observed differences, so that efficacious interventions may be developed and implemented so that the goal of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy to overcome health disparities becomes a reality,” the researchers wrote.
Disclosure: Lesko reports receiving speakers fees from Gilead Sciences. Please see the full study for a list of all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.
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