Margaret May

Margaret Thelma May is Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of Bristol, and specialises in prognostic modelling and HIV epidemiology. May has a B.A. in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, a PGCE in mathematics from University of Oxford (1982), and Ph.D. (2008) from the University of Bristol.

May has led studies to better understand treatment effectiveness and life expectancies of people living with HIV/AIDS. She was the main author of a study published in The Lancet in 2006 comparing HIV patients receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) across different time periods, which showed that death rates did not significantly decline during this time period although viral levels were lowered. May suggested this was likely due to factors such as later initiation of treatment, shifts in patient demographics, and increased co-infections. In 2011, she and her colleagues at the University of Bristol published a study in The BMJ indicating that the life expectancy of a 20-year-old with HIV rose from 30 years in 1996–1999 to nearly 46 years by 2006–2008. They determined this by analyzing data from the UK Collaborative HIV Cohort study which has tracked patients at major clinical centers since 1996.

Selected publications