New HIV/AIDS Report

An epidemic that began as a faint whisper over 25 years ago in the United States has now become a ROAR heard worldwide. Today, an estimated 1 million people in the U.S. alone are living with HIV or AIDS, with about 40,000 new cases each year. In what one expert called a "grim report," an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of HIV diagnoses trends revealed that during 2001 to 2006, an estimated 214,379 persons in 33 U.S. states were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, with 97,577, or 46 percent, of those cases being among "men who have sex with men," or MSM; a term referring to those who often do not identify themselves as strictly homosexual (gay) or bisexual.

However, the most disturbing trend seems to be emerging among young MSMs aged 13 to 24, which had an annual increase of 12.4 percent. Still higher was the increase among young African-American MSMs, who had an annual increase of nearly 15 percent, compared with a 1.9 percent annual increase among African-American MSMs of all ages. In contrast, there was a 1 percent decline in the 25 to 44-year-old group, as well as a 4.4 percent decline for HIV diagnoses attributed to high-risk heterosexual contact, and a 9.5 percent decline in diagnoses due to injection-drug use.

Dr. Richard Wolitski, acting director of the HIV/AIDS prevention at the CDC, said there could be several factors fueling the increases. "Because of the new treatments, some men perceive it to be a less severe disease than it once was," he said. "These men represent a new generation that has not been personally affected by AIDS in the same way that their older peers were." Ron Simmons, president of Us Helping Us, an AIDS service organization for gay black men, agrees that the revolution in antiretroviral therapy over the last ten years appears to have lessened the fear of HIV infection. "I can remember going to a funeral every four or five days," he said. "Now, if you talk to some of these young men, they say, ‘If I do get infected, I will simply take the blue pill or the pink pill, like my friend."

But Jennifer Hecht, education director at the Stop AIDS Project in San Francisco, has a different view. She said the key factor in the increase in infection rates is due to lack of access to information. "In a lot of ways this is connected to the administration's policy of emphasizing abstinence-only education," she said. "And the high rates we see among black men and other minorities indicate that it's very much connected to larger issues like poverty and racism."

In the report, published June 26 in the CDC's public health journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, health officials stressed the importance of HIV/AIDS testing because "after persons become aware that they are HIV positive, most reduce their high-risk sexual behavior." This could be a big step in reducing the transmission of HIV, considering that an estimated 25 percent of people with the disease are totally unaware they are infected.

In an accompanying editorial, officials wrote that, "prevention strategies should be strengthened, improved, and implemented more broadly," urging increased involvement by state and local health departments to allocate HIV prevention resources in their areas. The report cited a recent collaboration between the state health department and local organizations in North Carolina, where the CDC implemented a successful intervention for young black MSM that resulted in decreases in high-risk sexual behavior and the number of sex partners with whom the behavior occurred.

Also, in order to improve the nation's ability to track new HIV infections, the CDC has established a new reporting system, which will be able to differentiate between recent and older HIV infections at the population level. According to the agency, data from the new system should become available later this year.