People With HIV Tend Not to Realize How Much Smoking Shortens Life Span

[Jim Allen]

Having HIV treatment available and a well suppressed virus, is great. Lifesaver. 

My thoughts are that after that the common controllable factors/issues that affect everyone regardless of HIV status do however seem to have greater impacts on the HIV population for a number of reasons. So I mean things like addiction, smoking, drinking, eating well, rest, diet and looking after mental health/ mental well-being.

Its hard to believe though that on the topic of smoking it is still so underestimated in the survey done. I do wonder how the question was presented and if the survey asked in other nations would find the similar trends.

Jim

October 17, 2018 • By Benjamin Ryan
https://www.poz.com/article/people-hiv-tend-realize-much-smoking-shortens-life-span

People With HIV Tend Not to Realize How Much Smoking Shortens Life Span
Researchers analyzed a population of Danish people with the virus and asked them about their perceived life expectancy.

When surveyed in a recent study, Danish people living with HIV underestimated the extent to which smoking would likely cut into their life expectancy, aidsmap reports.

Publishing their findings in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, researchers in Denmark polled two groups of people about their perceived life expectancy, including 937 HIV-positive people and 6,147 age-matched controls from the general population.

The participants with HIV had a median age of 51 while the controls had a median age of 53. Eighty-eight percent of the overall group was male. Among those with HIV,30 percent werecurrentsmokers and 35 percent were former smokers. Among those without the virus, 14 percentwere currentsmokersand 38 percentwere former smokers.

On average, the people with HIV believed they would live to 80.5 years old, while the control group anticipated living to 85.2 years old.

People with HIV said they believed smoking would cut into their life expectancy by 3.65 years while the control group believedsmoking would shave 4.36 years off their own lives.

Aside from taking antiretrovirals (ARVs), quitting smoking is the most effective move smokers living with well-treated HIV can make to lower their risk of illness and death, sincesmoking perhaps doubles their overall risk of death. Research has suggested that people with HIV who smoke—about 40 percent of those with the virus in the United States do so—losemore years of life to smoking than to the virus provided they are taking ARVs. One study estimated that the average 35-year-old man living with fully suppressed HIV has a life expectancy of 78 if he doesn’t smoke and just 70 if he does.

Jim

https://www.poz.com/basics/hiv-basics/hiv-nutrition

Smoking:
https://www.poz.com/article/1-4-smokers-successful-hiv-treatment-projected-die-lung-cancer
Those who adhere well to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for the virus but smoke are estimated to have a more than 10 times greater chance of dying of lung cancer
compared with dying of AIDS-related complications.

https://www.poz.com/basics/hiv-basics/hiv-smoking 
https://www.poz.com/article/attention-hivpositive-smokers-article-save-life

Drinking

https://www.poz.com/article/alcohol-buzz-27115-1109
HIV Is Linked to Getting a Buzz on Less Alcohol
https://www.poz.com/article/safe-alcohol-people-hiv
How Safe Is Alcohol for People With HIV?
https://www.poz.com/article/even-one-two-drinks-day-can-harmful-people-hiv
The safety threshold for alcohol use is lower for HIV-positive people

Mental wellness and HIV
https://www.poz.com/article/interested-much-lately-clinically-depressed
https://www.poz.com/article/state-mind
https://www.poz.com/article/time-spent-depressed-linked-poorer-engagement-hiv-care
Study Depression & HIV - missed clinic visits, VL and a greater risk of death

[CaveyUK]

That's the same for both positive and negative folk though, surely?

Smoking statistically reduces lifespan whatever else you have.

But I suspect that in general most smokers do know that, but most don't visualise themselves smoking that far into the future, which possibly accounts for the underestimation of risk.