Number of HIV cases up in U.S.
| • | State trying to improve HIV screening efforts |
By Daniel Q. Haney
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Doctors have been so successful in saving the lives of people with AIDS that the number of Americans with HIV is increasing again after holding steady for years and is now approaching 1 million, according to government estimates.
Experts say the total number of Americans living with HIV is probably rising by about 25,000 a year — a testament to the power of AIDS drugs that have vastly improved treatment over the past six years.
The government estimates that 40,000 Americans become infected with the HIV virus each year, a figure that has remained roughly stable for more than a decade. However, until the turnaround in AIDS therapy, this figure was nearly offset each year by AIDS deaths, so the total number of Americans carrying the virus stayed level.
Now, AIDS deaths have plunged from around 40,000 annually to about 15,000. As a result, new infections are outstripping deaths.
Dr. Patricia Fleming of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented the new estimates yesterday at the Ninth Annual Retrovirus Conference in Seattle.
The latest estimate of HIV prevalence in the United States, calculated as of 2000, is between 850,000 and 950,000 people.
According to the latest estimates, between 400,000 and 450,000 people in the United States were infected with the HIV virus in 1984. This grew to 550,000 to 650,000 in 1986. By 1992, the figure was 650,000 to 900,000.
According to the CDC, the total number of infected Americans has increased by about 50,000 in the last two years studied, 1999 and 2000. That suggests the total could reach 1 million this year.
Survival increased almost overnight when drug combinations that included medicines called protease inhibitors transformed HIV from a death sentence to a chronic treatable illness.
By the late 1990s, many doctors feared these gains would evaporate as the treatments lost their punch.
To their relief, however, this has not happened often. Even when a resistant virus emerges, patients who stay on the drugs usually keep their HIV levels low and remain free of obvious disease. Dr. Constance Benson of the University of Colorado said that in her AIDS practice, the annual death rate has held steady at 1 percent to 2 percent.
"The fear that treatment failure would result in a subsequent rise in mortality has not so far panned out," she said.
The CDC has made an increase in testing of people who face a high risk for HIV a major goal. Knowing about the virus allows those who are infected to begin treatment when necessary and to guard against spreading HIV to others.
Fleming said that about three-quarters of infected people in the United States know they have the virus, up from about two-thirds in 1998. "The proportion is improving, but we have a long way to go," she said.
No one knows precisely how many Americans with HIV are being seen by doctors for their infections. However, the data suggest that about one-third have not received basic blood cell counts, which are the standard first step in HIV care.
