HIV-positive people over 50 have an increasingly longer life expectancy during the modern era of antiretrovirals (ARVs), although it still falls short of the general population’s, Reuters Health reports.

Publishing their findings in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, researchers looked at data from 2,440 members of the Danish HIV Cohort Study (DHCS). They also established an age- and sex-matched control group of 14,888  HIV-negative Danes from the nation’s Civil Registration System.

The median survival after age 50 for the HIV-positive individuals was 11.8 years from 1996 to 1999 and 22.8 years during 2006 to 2014. Between 1996 and 2014, the control group had a median post-50 survival of 30.2 years.

The researchers looked at data on 517 HIV-positive people taking ARVs for at least a year, who had at least 350 CD4 cells and a fully suppressed viral load. The researchers found that this HIV-positive group had a median post-50 survival of 25.6 years, compared with 34.2 years for the group of 3,192 controls matched to this group who did not have major health problems.

To read the Reuters Health article, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.