What do we know about older adults and HIV? a review of social and behavioral literature

Abstract

The fastest growing segment of the United States HIV population is people aged 50 and older. This heterogeneous group includes people with diverse pathways into HIV positive status in later life, including aging with the disease as well as later life-acquired infections. As people with HIV live into older ages, solving problems of successful secondary prevention and ongoing treatment requires more specific knowledge of the particular aging-related contextual sociocultural, psychosocial, and personal factors salient to the situations of persons living with HIV. Greater knowledge of these factors will help solve challenges to reducing psychological burden and promoting health maintenance for people with HIV. Yet, the current literature on aging and HIV remains nascent. To assess the state of knowledge of the sociocultural and behavioral factors associated with aging with HIV, we conducted a systematic critical content review of peer-reviewed social and behavioral research on aging and HIV to answer the question, “How have older age, and social, cultural, and behavioral aspects of the intersection of HIV and age been addressed in the literature?” We searched First Search, Proquest, Psych Info, Pub Med, Wilson Select Plus, and World Cat and identified 1549 articles. We then reviewed these to select peer-reviewed articles reporting results of research on the social and behavioral aspects of living with HIV at age 50 and older. Fifty-eight publications were identified that met study inclusion criteria. While few publications reported clear age-related differences, there were significant ethnic differences in living with HIV in later life and also differences among older people when groups were defined by mode of transmission. Findings are discussed in light of constructs from gerontology which may contribute to clarifying how later life, life course stage, and psychological development intersect with, influence, and are influenced by HIV disease and long-term anti-retroviral therapy use.

Perfil de pessoas idosas vivendo com HIV/aids em Pelotas, sul do Brasil, 1998 a 2013

“…Essas doenças e intercorrências são facilmente confundidas com sintomas associados a várias afecções comuns nessa faixa etária. 1,29 A realização da pesquisa a partir de fontes secundárias pode ter comprometido a qualidade dos dados obtidos. Mesmo após a revisão de outras fontes de dados, buscando complementação das variáveis pesquisadas, faltaram informações, o que limitou a análise de algumas variáveis; como 'escolaridade', em que houve 36,6% de perdas.…”

Assessing quality of life in middle-aged and older adults with HIV: psychometric testing of the WHOQOL-HIV-Bref

“…Although HIV infection has been historically considered a disease of young adults [1], epidemiological evidence confirms that adults aged 50 years and older constitute now an evergrowing proportion of HIV/AIDS cases worldwide [2,3]. Thus, with the changing patterns in HIV epidemiology and ageing of the HIV population, the issue of quality of life (QoL) assessment in older ages has become increasingly important.…”

Demographic and epidemiological characteristics of HIV opportunistic infections among older adults in Nigeria

“…Incidence of HIV infection might have been as high among older adults as it was among youths but the picture was unclear because they have been more or less neglected in HIV testing and prevention programmes 6 . Most of the current knowledge about the characteristics of HIV infection in older persons has come from the developed countries in North America 7,8 and Europe [9][10][11] . The pattern has also been described in China 12,13 and Taiwan…”