2019 Volume 72 Issue 1 Pages 31-37
The frequency of the ages at which HIV/AIDS-related deaths occurred and that of patients detected before or after development of AIDS followed a normal distribution. The median age of HIV/AIDS-related deaths was 40–44 years in 1995-1998 and 50–54 years in 2014-2016, whereas the median age at detection of “HIV” or “AIDS” infection was constantly 25–29 years, implying that the survival time of the HIV/AIDS patients became longer by 10 years in the past 20 odd years. The increased survival time could possibly be attributable to the introduction of HIV/AIDS therapies such as HAART. Importantly, however, during the same period, the life span of the Japanese population was lengthened by nearly 10 years. Under the assumption that HIV/AIDS patients died 20 years after the detection of the infection, the total number of deaths was 1,446 in 1990–2016, which was close to 1,532, the total number of deaths in Vital Statistics during the same period.
