CDC reports troubling rise in HIV cases in gay men

By David Brown
The Washington Post

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Among ethnic groups, Hispanics had the largest increase, with 26 percent more people diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus last year than four years ago. Among whites, the number of new diagnoses in 2002 was 8 percent higher than the number of new diagnoses in 1999. The number of blacks and Asians newly diagnosed in those two years remained stable.

The information, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), comes from 29 states that count all new positive HIV tests each year. Washington is not among those states. The data are considered the best window onto the state of the AIDS epidemic nationwide because HIV causes AIDS. The trends are similar to ones announced this year from a smaller number of states.

"We need to remind not just the groups at risk, but the American public, that HIV and AIDS is not over in the United States," said Ronald Valdiserri, a physician and epidemiologist at the CDC.

Several European countries and Australia also have reported an increase in the number of new HIV diagnoses in gay men in recent years. Experts attribute the trend to two things: a complacency about risky behavior that arose because of the success of anti-retroviral therapy and the coming of age of a new generation of gay men with no memory of the epidemic's early, devastating years.

"We have to continue to work with communities and medical-care providers to reinforce the importance of maintaining safer behaviors," Valdiserri said.

While the new HIV diagnoses in gay men reported by the 29 states are not necessarily all recent infections, CDC researchers believe most are. That's because new cases of AIDS each year are not increasing substantially, indicating the new diagnoses generally are not people who are tested for the first time after their disease has progressed to AIDS.

In addition, numerous cities are seeing a rise in cases of syphilis in gay men. About half of gay men newly diagnosed with that venereal disease also are infected with HIV, Valdiserri said.

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