Friday, March 13, 2009

Uncomfortable Aside

Rates of HIV in people who are 50 years old or older is 'surprisingly high, and the risk factors are totally unexplored,' reports the World Health Organization (WHO) in a new study. There has been little work to date exploring HIV risk among older people (including the potential impact of erectile dysfunction drug use), but the international WHO study did find that older people were less likely to practice safer sex than people under 50. This is especially concerning because studies have found that HIV disease may progress faster in older people, partly due to their age and partly because many doctors don't even think to test an older person for HIV, the WHO report says.


The full WHO report on HIV among people over 50 is available online.

(Via The Body.)

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