Once Again, Steve Scheibel was Ahead of His Time

More news from the 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich in July.

I’ve already talked about the revolution in injectable medications. Another hot topic was the issue of people aging with HIV. Our patients are getting older. What happened in the 1990s was as drugs and treatment improved, people began to live longer.

That was pretty much unexpected in those early days, when most people died.

At an all-day about “Aging with HIV,” a representative from a drug company working on healthy aging among HIV-positive people shared his own story.

Alex Kalomparis. Credit: iasociety.org

Alex Kalomparis, senior vice president of Gilead Sciences, told of how he is HIV-negative but his husband of 25 years is HIV-positive. “It’s only a few years ago that we gave ourselves permission to think about how we might grow older together.”

For much of their 25 years together, he and his husband assumed that wouldn’t happen.

But now, people can live long lives, almost as long and as healthy as counterparts without HIV.

But there are some differences.

What we learned is that HIV does accelerate aging at the cellular level. The virus changes the character of the cells and the way they behave. The cells age, die off and change faster than in people without HIV. The good news part is that these modern HIV drugs slow that down enough to allow people with HIV to live into their 60s, 70s and 80s.

The agenda at the session on aging with HIV. Credit: iasociety.org

They also talked about strategies addressing heart disease, bone health and other conditions that can affect people the longer they live.

“There’s something beautiful about becoming one of the silver ones,” Linda A. Scruggs, who has lived with HIV for 34 years, told people in attendance. She co-founded Ribbon, a national organization to improve health of people with chronic conditions.

“In many countries, we honor wisdom and aging. With HIV, we have not done that. This is our time to acknowledge that while we learned some stuff, we’ve made some mistakes, we’ve had great successes and we want to celebrate our tomorrow. We get to write, collectively, as a community, the blueprint of … how we will serve how and how we will support people aging with HIV.”

Ten years ago, Dr. Steve Scheibel was talking about the ways HIV accelerated aging at the cellular level. Listening to the speakers at the 25th International AIDS Conference, I again was reminded of his brilliance.

As I listened to the speakers, I recalled my late colleague Dr. Steve Scheibel. He was talking 10 years ago about HIV and aging and cells and cell changes. He anticipated this.

I have to admit that it took me a while to get fully on board, but even at the time what he was saying was making sense. Guess what. He was right. That’s what the speakers at the conference talked about.

Two things came to mind as I listened.

One is that HIV and aging isn’t going away. We have another several generations of people who will need specialized programs to manage their HIV.

The other thing is that like with so much else about HIV, Steve Scheibel was right.