With HIV, growing older faster

Larry Gibson first spotted Dennis Golay outside West Hollywood's French Market Place. By the time he was halfway across Santa Monica Boulevard, he'd fallen in love.

It was Nov. 14, 1981 -- Golay's 34th birthday. Seven years later, both men tested positive for the AIDS virus, an almost certain death sentence in the days before antiretroviral drugs. Having dreamed of growing old together, they were devastated.

"We had something so special," said Gibson, 63, looking back at that dark time. "To be cheated out of its maturity just didn't seem right."

"I guess it wasn't," said Golay, now a silver-haired 60. "We're still here."

Much attention has been paid in recent years to how the human immunodeficiency virus disproportionately infects African Americans and Latinos, including women, many of them poor. But the new reality of HIV is not just black or brown. It is also gray.

The graying of HIV/AIDS is a little-recognized new phase of the epidemic in the United States, and it comes with its own complications. Gibson and Golay are growing old together, true. They are also growing older faster. Ailments common to aging, including depression, are showing up sooner than expected in many people with HIV, according to patients and the doctors who treat them.

"We're seeing things that my mother is experiencing," Golay said, "and she's 86."

Golay had a heart attack last year at 59, despite a lifetime of healthful eating and regular exercise. He underwent a quintuple bypass. ("He never does anything small," Gibson said.) His father had died of a heart attack -- at 70.

Gibson has the sunken eyes and cheeks of an old man, side effects of the antiretroviral drugs that keep his HIV in check. Lipodystrophy, as the condition is called, rearranges fat in the body and at one point gave Golay a humped back. It can lead to insulin resistance and raise cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood. With HIV, growing older faster
Los Angeles Times