[The chronicity of HIV infection]

The widespread use of highly active antiretroviral therapy led to a substantial decrease of HIV related-morbidity and mortality in industrialized countries. These recent advances allow to envisage a chronicity of HIV infection and led HIV infected people to set up a familial or professional life-project, difficult to imagine until now. The increase in life-expectancy is nevertheless closely dependent on the prolonged adherence of the patients to therapy, which justifies the development of strategies to increase medication compliance. The side-effects of long-term taken drugs often impair the quality of life of HIV infected people: abnormal fat distribution and atherogen hyperlipidemia and insulin resistance, mainly described with protease inhibitors, are new worrying concerns. Chronicity of HIV infection favours also the development of co-morbidity (HIV-HCV co-infection). The necessity of a more global and varied case management of people living with HIV is emerging simultaneously with a new dynamic of clinical research whose ultimal goal still remains the achievement of HIV eradication strategies.