A new study found that married men are at a lower risk of dying from HIV/AIDS compared to divorced or single men.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside, conducted a study, a first of its kind, examining the effects of marital status on deaths of individuals with HIV/AIDS.
For the study, researchers used data from a recent release of the U.S. National Longitudinal Mortality Study and the National Death Index, a collection of data during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Researchers tracked nearly 763,000 individuals aged 15 and older between 1983 and 1994. A total of 410 of these individuals died of HIV/AIDS in that period of time.
"These data capture when HIV/AIDS was approaching pandemic level," UCR sociology professor Augustine Kposowa explained in a press release. "People were very afraid. The perception was that only men who had sex with men were getting infected, so no one was looking at risk factors for people who were married, widowed or separated."
After analyzing the 11 years of mortality data, Kposowa found that marital status was an important HIV/AIDS risk factor for men, but not women. Divorced men were six times more likely to die from the infection than married men. Single men who had never been married were 13.5 times more likely to die from the infection when compared to married men. Researchers also found that African-American men were 2.7 times as likely to die of HIV/AIDS as white men, and Hispanic men were more than twice as likely to die of the disease as white men.
For women, race was found to be an important risk factor with African-American women nine times more likely to die of HIV/AIDS and Latinas seven times more likely to die of the disease than white women.
While the reason behind why African-American and Latin women were at a higher risk of dying from the infection is yet to be determined, Kposowa assumes that lack of health care and relevant information might to the cause.
"Those without care are more likely to be minority women," he said. "It's really a function of the health care system, who has access, and how soon people seek care. So in the 1980s, poor people and minorities, who often lack information about health care, were at greater risk of death from HIV/AIDS. By the time they presented themselves for health care, the disease would have progressed."
