Estimating trends in life expectancy in HIV-positive individuals
Authors: Matthias Egger, Leigh F Johnson
Journal: The Lancet Global Health (2015)

Estimates of life expectancy are of obvious importance to people with HIV-1, and are essential to monitor and predict the progress of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to plan health services. The Rwandan study reported by Sabin Nsanzimana and colleagues1Nsanzimana S Remera E Kanters S et al.Life expectancy among HIV-positive patients in Rwanda: a retrospective observational cohort study.Lancet Glob Health. 2015; 3: e169-e177Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (87) Google Scholar in The Lancet Global Health is the first from sub-Saharan Africa to focus on the evolution of HIV-positive life expectancy during the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy, and is a welcome addition to a small body of data. The investigators show that the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy resulted in substantial gains in life expectancy, with near-normal life expectancy in individuals enrolled in care with little immunodeficiency.1Nsanzimana S Remera E Kanters S et al.Life expectancy among HIV-positive patients in Rwanda: a retrospective observational cohort study.Lancet Glob Health. 2015; 3: e169-e177Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (87) Google Scholar How reliable are estimates of life expectancy in people living with HIV? Life expectancy is the number of years that a person of a particular age would live, assuming that current age-specific mortality rates remain constant. Calculations might thus seem straightforward, but for people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa they are not. First, analyses rely on data for patients in treatment and care programmes, which might not be representative of all individuals living with HIV-1.2Stover J Bertozzi S Gutierrez JP et al.The global impact of scaling up HIV/AIDS prevention programs in low- and middle-income countries.Science. 2006; 311: 1474-1476Crossref PubMed Scopus (80) Google Scholar Second, loss to follow-up of patients after the start of antiretroviral therapy is common.3Rosen S Fox MP Gill CJ Patient retention in antiretroviral therapy programs in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review.PLoS Med. 2007; 4: e298Crossref PubMed Scopus (626) Google Scholar In the absence of functioning systems for vital statistics or outreach programmes to trace patients who were lost, mortality for these individuals remains unknown. To ignore the deaths in patients lost to follow-up substantially biases mortality downwards: death accounts for a substantial proportion of patients lost to follow-up.4Egger M Spycher BD Sidle J et al.Correcting mortality for loss to follow-up: a nomogram applied to antiretroviral treatment programmes in sub-Saharan Africa.PLoS Med. 2011; 8: e1000390Crossref PubMed Scopus (122) Google Scholar Last, the duration of follow-up needs to be standardised across calendar periods. The risk of death is not uniform after initiation of antiretroviral therapy, but falls with increasing duration of therapy.5Egger M May M Chene G et al.for the ART Cohort CollaborationPrognosis of HIV-1-infected patients starting highly active antiretroviral therapy: a collaborative analysis of prospective studies.Lancet. 2002; 360: 119-129Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (1309) Google Scholar Nsanzimana and colleagues1Nsanzimana S Remera E Kanters S et al.Life expectancy among HIV-positive patients in Rwanda: a retrospective observational cohort study.Lancet Glob Health. 2015; 3: e169-e177Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (87) Google Scholar addressed all of these issues. The researchers limited the duration of follow-up to 3 years in all calendar periods, by contrast with other studies (eg, an analysis from the UK6May M Gompels M Delpech V et al.Impact of late diagnosis and treatment on life expectancy in people with HIV-1: UK Collaborative HIV Cohort (UK CHIC) Study.BMJ. 2011; 343: d6016Crossref PubMed Scopus (256) Google Scholar and a collaborative study in high-income countries7The Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort CollaborationLife expectancy of individuals on combination antiretroviral therapy in high-income countries: a collaborative analysis of 14 cohort studies.Lancet. 2008; 372: 293-299Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (1332) Google Scholar). The Rwandan study therefore controlled at least to some extent for survivor bias, although how similar lengths of follow-up were in the two calendar periods is unclear. Many patients from a nationally representative sample of clinics were included, which is an important strength of the study. Unfortunately, no information about mortality in patients lost to follow-up was obtained, but statistical adjustment was made assuming that about half of patients lost to follow-up had died. In Rwanda and many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, vital statistics function poorly, with only a small number of deaths registered.8Boerma T Moving towards better cause of death registration in Africa and Asia.Glob Health Action. 2014; 7: 1-2Google Scholar The exception is South Africa, where coverage of vital registration is near universal and data from treatment and care programmes for HIV can be linked with mortality records to obtain accurate mortality estimates.9Johnson LF Mossong J Dorrington RE et al.Life expectancies of South African adults starting antiretroviral treatment: collaborative analysis of cohort studies.PLoS Med. 2013; 10: e1001418Crossref PubMed Scopus (298) Google Scholar The importance of the deaths among patients lost to follow-up in the Rwandan study is underlined by the much-higher estimates of life expectancy obtained when no adjustment was made, and uncertainty remains in this regard. How do the increases in life expectancy estimated for Rwanda compare with those of other studies, and how should they be interpreted? In Rwanda, the improvements were probably driven by changes over time in eligibility criteria for antiretroviral therapy and associated increases in CD4 counts at antiretroviral therapy initiation. Indeed, in a large-scale analysis of the International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA)10Egger M Ekouevi DK Williams C et al.Cohort Profile: the international epidemiological databases to evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) in sub-Saharan Africa.Int J Epidemiol. 2012; 41: 1256-1264Crossref PubMed Scopus (181) Google Scholar that included patients starting antiretroviral therapy in 23 countries between 2002 and 2009, Rwanda had the highest annual increase in CD4 cell count at the start of therapy.11Avila D Althoff KN Mugglin C et al.Immunodeficiency at the start of combination antiretroviral therapy in low-, middle-, and high-income countries.J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2014; 65: e8-16PubMed Google Scholar However, whether any improvement in life expectancy would remain after controlling for these changes in baseline CD4 counts is unclear. Such an analysis addresses the question of whether or not the quality of HIV care has improved over time, which is important in view of the ever-increasing patient burden that treatment and care programmes for HIV face in sub-Saharan Africa.10Egger M Ekouevi DK Williams C et al.Cohort Profile: the international epidemiological databases to evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) in sub-Saharan Africa.Int J Epidemiol. 2012; 41: 1256-1264Crossref PubMed Scopus (181) Google Scholar Unfortunately, no trends in retention in care were presented by Nsanzimana and colleagues, and the method used to estimate life expectancy—the abridged life table method—is not well suited to answering questions about trends in quality of care, because it allows little scope for multivariate analysis. Using an alternative method—the relative survival model—we have recently shown that some improvement in life expectancy is likely to have occurred in South Africa, after controlling for both differences in baseline CD4 count and antiretroviral therapy duration across different calendar years.9Johnson LF Mossong J Dorrington RE et al.Life expectancies of South African adults starting antiretroviral treatment: collaborative analysis of cohort studies.PLoS Med. 2013; 10: e1001418Crossref PubMed Scopus (298) Google Scholar However, the improvement was small when compared with the more substantial improvements reported in studies from high-income countries and the Rwandan study, which did not fully control for baseline CD4 count and duration of antiretroviral therapy (figure). Finally, as the investigators point out,1Nsanzimana S Remera E Kanters S et al.Life expectancy among HIV-positive patients in Rwanda: a retrospective observational cohort study.Lancet Glob Health. 2015; 3: e169-e177Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (87) Google Scholar the improvements in life expectancy in Rwanda might partly be due to improvements in non-HIV mortality. The study by Nsanzimana and colleagues contributes to a growing evidence base on the successes and challenges of scaling up antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings. The reasons for the observed increases in life expectancy in people living with HIV in Rwanda are not entirely clear, however, and further research is needed to disentangle the effects of loss to follow-up, changing eligibility criteria for antiretroviral therapy, patient management systems, drug regimens, and non-HIV mortality. We declare no competing interests. The Southern African region of the International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) is supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute of Allergy And Infectious Diseases (NIAID) through grant 5U01-AI069924-05. Life expectancy among HIV-positive patients in Rwanda: a retrospective observational cohort studyThis study adds to the growing body of evidence showing the benefit to HIV-positive patients of early enrolment in care and initiation of antiretroviral therapy. Full-Text PDF Open Access