Analysis of death and survival time of HIV/AIDS patients from 1998 to 2015 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province

Objective To discuss the death, survival and its influencing factors of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) carriers/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients in Wuhan City.Methods HIV/AIDS patients in Wuhan were recruited into this cohort study between January 1st, 1998 and December 31st, 2015. Information related to survivals, deaths and others were collected and the total mortality was calculated. Univariate and multivariate analysis were used to analyze the factors influencing survival time.Results A total of 3 310 HIV/AIDS patients were recruited and 363 deaths were reported with the total mortality rate of 4.22 per 100 persons per year. The average age at death was 52. Univariate analysis presented a significant difference (all P<0.05) in survival time of HIV/AIDS patients based on age, marriage, education, exposure history, the course of disease, whether to provide publicity and education or not, whether to provide anti-opportunistic infection drugs or not, whether to provide social assistance or not, whether to suffer from tuberculosis or not, whether to be subject to antiretroviral therapy (ART), the baseline CD4⁺ cell counts. Analysis of Cox proportional hazard model indicated that age from 65 to 88 years, low education, being a AIDS patient, not providing publicity and education, suffering from tuberculosis, not receiving ART, and CD4⁺ cell count<200 (P<0.05) were risk factors of death.Conclusions The all-cause mortality rate of HIV/AIDS patients is decreasing in the recent years. The important influencing factor of the survival time among HIV/AIDS patients is ART. It is necessary to implement the effective interventions continuously based on the factors related to the mortality of HIV/AIDS patients to increase their life span.