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The economic cost of HIV/AIDS is far greater than previously estimated, and the cost is even higher for minorities, according to a new study that estimated the direct and indirect costs of the disease.

The total lifetime cost of illness for Americans newly diagnosed with HIV in 2002 is approximately $36.4 billion, of which more than 80 percent is related to productivity losses, a cost that most previous studies have omitted.

It is the result of collaboration among researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Emory University Center for AIDS Research, and the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.

While researchers have previously estimated the economic costs of HIV/AIDS, they have focused primarily on the direct medical expenses of treating the disease.

The results up to now have given an incomplete picture of the disease's economic consequences, according to Angela Blair Hutchinson, PhD, MPH, a health economist at the CDC and lead author of the paper.

"We wanted to assess the economic burden of an HIV infection in the U.S.," says Dr. Hutchinson, "by examining the impact of stage of disease at diagnosis and access to treatment on the cost of HIV infection and how this might differ by race/ethnicity."

Specifically, minorities incur fewer direct medical costs than whites ($160,400 for blacks on average, compared with $180,900 for whites), but suffer greater financial damage from lost productivity ($838,000 for Hispanics and $766,800 for blacks on average, compared with $661,100 for whites).

The differences, according to Hutchinson, reflect disparities in treatment.

Minorities are, on average, diagnosed at later stages of the disease than whites.

In addition, whites with HIV/AIDS are more likely to receive antiretroviral therapy (ART).

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