Life insurance for HIV positive people on stable treatment

An analysis from the Antiretroviral Cohort Collaboration (ART-CC) related to life expectancy from the perspective of access life insurance has been published ahead of print in the journal AIDS.

The analysis used the ART-CC database, which included more than 300,000 patient years and more than 1,000 deaths to identify HIV positive people with low risk factors for HIV progression. They then compared these outcomes with risks associated with the insured population in each country. This included selecting people who were not infected by injecting drug use, were not coinfected with hepatitis C and who started triple therapy ART from 1996-2008.

Although the methodology is complex, the paper includes important modeling results showing that successful treatment produced sufficient confidence in projections for life expectancy to be able to cover a standard 20 year mortgage for >50% of HIV positive people who have access to treatment.

The researchers hope that their data will help normalise access to these services for people who are currently excluded on the basis of HIV status alone.

Kaulich-Bartz J et al. Insurability of HIV positive people treated with antiretroviral therapy in Europe: collaborative analysis of HIV cohort studies. Published ahead of print, AIDS 2013, 27:000–00025. February 2013. doi: 10.1097/QAD.0b013e3283601199.
http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/toc/publishahead