Fertility drugs increasing HIV risks in older people

Geneva, March 4: Easy access to erectile dysfunction drugs has enabled extended sex life for older people, but, at the same time, it has also made way for easier contraction of HIVdefine by them.

A recent WHO report showed an alarming increase in the number of people aged 50 and above living with HIVdefine. It indicated that sexually active older people are less likely to have safe sex, so are more prone to catching the infection.

Older people, who are recently diagnosed with HIV, make 8 percent of all the cases in Europe and 11 percent in the United States.

“These individuals have a shorter time from diagnosis to the onset of AIDS, reflecting both age-related faster progression to AIDS and doctors' failure to consider HIV as a diagnosis,” the report said.

Fading immunity of old people allows easier transmission and fast progress of the virus in them. The disease, quite obviously, reduces their life expectancy more than that it does younger patients’.

Moreover, less likelihood in older people to go for screening also delays the diagnoses. There is a wide assumption that old people can hardly contract HIV, which keeps them from going for screening.

This is the reason why, despite having witnessed high prevalence of HIV among older people, “the risk factors are totally unexplored”, said the study authors from the WHO and Minnesota's St. Olaf College.

Thinning of vaginal mucous membrane with age makes older women highly susceptible to getting the virus. Having unprotected sex can put such women at a very high risk of developing AIDS.

Thus, increased sexual activeness attained using fertility enhancing drugs are putting older people at greater risk of having AIDS. These drugs do not prepare their weak immune systems and damaged sexual organs to combat the deadly virus.

AIDS incidence is especially high among older people of rich economies because of wider access to fertility drugs in those countries. However, developing nations, too, might soon follow suit.

“While erectile dysfunction is common and erectile dysfunction drugs are widely available in developing countries, no study has been done of their possible impact on the HIV epidemic, although their use in industrialized countries has been associated with risky safety practices," said the report.