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Thanks to effective treatment, HIV-infected patients are living much longer than they used to. Their life expectancy at age 20 increased from nine years in the period 1993-1995 to 24 years in 2002-2004. Today people who are newly infected with HIV may even be capable of achieving a normal lifespan if they rigorously adhere to HIV treatment.
But this longevity is a mixed blessing. For as the Associated Press reported on June 12, three decades after the first diagnosis of HIV, doctors are seeing signs of premature or accelerated aging such as memory loss, arthritis, kidney failure,and high blood pressure in HIV survivors in their 40's and 50's.
The good news, however, is that researchers are trying to get at the causes of such premature or accelerated aging—for instance, is it due to HIV, to the drugs used to treat it, or to both—and to find effective ways of dealing with it.
More information on this subject can be found in the March 4,2011 Psychiatric News : http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/5/18.1.full.