Despite Advances, AIDS Poses New Risks

This week's World AIDS Day ceremony in Washington featured President Obama and Bono, and the theme was "The beginning of the end of AIDS."

The event highlighted the remarkable progress in fighting the HIV epidemic -- the rate of new infections worldwide has declined by 20 percent since 1997, and more people are living longer with HIV than ever before. It's likely that by 2017 -- and perhaps as soon as 2015 -- more than half of all Americans living with HIV will be 50 or older, Daniel Tietz, executive director of the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, writes at the Huffington Post.

But there are sobering developments on the AIDS front lines, too. As Tietz points out in his post, there's been a shocking rise in new infections among middle-aged Americans; people 50 and older now account for one in six of the new HIV diagnoses.

What's going on? These new victims are people who somehow dodged the bullet back in the hard-partying, reckless early 1980s, only to become infected in middle age. Despite all those erectile dysfunction product commercials you see on TV, many of us are still players.

This 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people in their fifties and older turn out to be much more sexually active than researchers previously believed. Not only that, but many older Americans are less careful about practicing safe sex than they probably were in the past. This 2006 study from the Journal of Women's Health, for example, found that 60 percent of single women 58 and older who were sexually active didn't insist that their partners use condoms.

Earlier this year University of Florida researchers found that although older women are aware of the risks for sexually transmitted diseases, they are not comfortable asking their doctor questions about their sexual health. The researchers pointed out that many health professionals mistakenly think older adults already have all the information they need.

It could be that middle-aged people wrongly think of HIV as a disease of the young, and that they're less likely to become infected because they're having sex with people their own age.

The National Institute on Aging has compiled this helpful primer on HIV and AIDS for older people and also provides links to other resources.

Researchers note that many cases remain undetected despite medical advances. "One reason may be that doctors do not always test older people for HIV/AIDS and so may miss some cases during routine check-ups," the National Institute on Aging report says. "Another may be that older people often mistake signs of HIV/AIDS for the aches and pains of normal aging, so they are less likely than younger people to get tested for the disease. Also, they may be ashamed or afraid of being tested.

"People age 50 and older may have the virus for years before being tested. By the time they are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, the virus may be in the late stages."

Read more: Surprising Facts About Sex After 50