Contact: Tom Ryan Humanities and Social Sciences Writer
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Commonly considered a disease affecting younger people, AIDS rapidly is becoming a part of older people's lives -- as care givers, family members, friends and patients.
But this "unique aging experience" still isn't well understood or receiving the attention it needs from health professionals and the public, according to an expert on aging and AIDS at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Nathan Linsk, associate professor in UIC's Jane Addams College of Social Work and director of the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center, is co-founder of the National Association on HIV over 50, the first group devoted to gathering and distributing information about HIV and AIDS for older people.
Linsk notes that between 10 and 15 percent of all AIDS cases reported in the United States occur in people over age 50. "Older people are infected in precisely the same manner as younger and middle-aged adults," he says, "through sexual contact and injection drug-related needle sharing."
As many as a fifth of all AIDS cases among people over 50 occur from intravenous drug use, he says.
And as new and improved AIDS medications continue to lengthen patients' lives, "it will no longer be unusual to live for 20 years or more with AIDS. Instead of a terminal disease, it will become more of a chronic illness, like hepatitis or diabetes."
AIDS touches older people's lives in other ways, Linsk says, each of them requiring help and support.
"They care for friends infected with HIV. Many adults with HIV turn to older parents for help and care. Grandparents act as substitute parents for their grandchildren, whose parents are unable to care for them due to their HIV-related needs."
Linsk recently interviewed 15 people, ages 52 to 72, some of whom had been HIV-positive for more than a decade, to determine how their AIDS experiences differ from younger people's. Most of the 15 were "skeptical" of traditional aging services programs, which generally aren't set up to help people with AIDS.
Others reported "extreme isolation and loneliness as the majority of their support system is deceased or alienated from them," according to Linsk.
"As people with HIV live for longer periods, their specific needs and coping mechanisms may vary and clinical services may be informed by better understanding of these experiences."
Another study is now looking at older adults' experiences as care givers to HIV-infected relatives.
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