HAART has produced enormous clinical benefits, prolonging the lives of HIV-infected patients. As a consequence, the HIV-infected population is, on average, older than in the pre-HAART era, and this has led click here to the emergence of chronic illnesses affecting HIV-infected patients [3]. In addition to end-stage renal disease, cardiovascular

disease and liver disease, our study has shown that chronic lung disease, neuropathy, gastrointestinal disease, serious psychiatric disorders and diabetes had a higher prevalence in HIV-infected patients compared with the general population. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neoplasias and dyslipidaemia have emerged in this population recently. Although we did not differentiate between AIDS-related and non-AIDS-related neoplasias, it is conceivable that the proportion of the latter has recently increased in our population, as this trend has been reported in other studies [16]. The present study makes a contribution to the literature by disaggregating, for the first time, the medical care costs associated with emergent chronic illnesses. This enables one to compare chronic disease costs in HIV-infected MEK inhibitor patients with the costs of chronic diseases in the general population. The per capita cost

of treating HIV-infected patients with chronic illnesses was high, which may present an economic challenge in the future. For example, the cost of treating HIV-infected patients affected by serious psychiatric disorders, or cardio-/cerebrovascular diseases plus dyslipidaemia, ranked second only after the average per capita spending for transplantation patients. However, the absolute number of patients receiving care for HIV infection was lower than that of patients with other chronic diseases (e.g. cardiovascular disease). Also, the total cost incurred by the health care system to treat HIV infection was lower than that to treat other chronic diseases (12th out of 15 chronic diseases). Current trends suggest that the number of HIV-infected

patients is likely to increase, primarily as Branched chain aminotransferase a result of the prolonged survival of patients, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the cost of HIV care will increase in the future. Moreover, the number of people living with HIV is anticipated to increase, and prevention measures have not reduced the number of people becoming infected [15]. This is another reason why the number of HIV-infected patients is likely to increase, and emphasizes the need for more effective prevention programmes. This study shows that, in patients newly entering clinical care for HIV infection, a considerable cost is still attributable to in-patient admissions. This is likely to be a result of the advanced stage of infection of these patients at the time of HIV diagnosis [15]. Krentz et al.