On Jan. 2, Brian posted about more news of the alarming rate of increase in HIV infections among young men who have sex with men.

He asked how we can start to change what may very well be a new, rising epidemic of HIV/AIDS infections — possibly worse than what we saw in the 1980s.

The New York Times published an article today on aging AIDS patients, many of whom are experiencing increased medical complications rarely seen in their peers without AIDS.

Mr. Holloway, who lives in a housing complex designed for the frail elderly, suffers from complex health problems usually associated with advanced age: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, kidney failure, a bleeding ulcer, severe depression, rectal cancer and the lingering effects of a broken hip.

Those illnesses, more severe than his 84-year-old father’s, are not what Mr. Holloway expected when lifesaving antiretroviral drugs became the standard of care in the mid-1990s.

The drugs gave Mr. Holloway back his future.

But at what cost?

That is the question, heretical to some, that is now being voiced by scientists, doctors and patients encountering a constellation of ailments showing up prematurely or in disproportionate numbers among the first wave of AIDS survivors to reach late middle age.

Nobody knows quite how all these complications are related to AIDS, medications or other health problems, but the instances of these complications in many AIDS-infected middle-agers and seniors are begging many questions.

The idea that HIV and AIDS are “manageable” diseases might need to be something of the past. Many have theorized that infection rates among young gay and bi men are rising because many of them see the disease as manageable.

If these young men saw the lives of many of our AIDS-infected middle-agers and seniors, they might think twice.

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