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Rate of HIV Diagnosis Higher Among Blacks Study Shows Figure Has Declined 5 Percent a Year

Posted on: Monday, 28 November 2005, 03:02 CST

By Lee Bowman< Scripps Howard News Service

Despite declining HIV diagnoses among blacks during the past four years, the rate of newly reported HIV infections is still more than eight times higher than among whites, according to a federal report Thursday.

"It's critical that we not become complacent with this. We must remember the human impact behind these numbers and continue to work to reduce this glaring disparity," said Dr. Ronald Valdiserri, the acting director for prevention of HIV at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported the new data.

The overall rate of diagnosis for the human immunodeficiency virus in the United States remained relatively stable in the past four years. But there was a sharp decline of 5 percent annually among blacks. Still, the rate of diagnosis was 76 per 100,000 among blacks, compared with only 9 per 100,000 among whites.

CDC officials said it appears that at least two trends contributed to the decline in diagnoses among blacks. First, there was a 9 percent annual decline in diagnoses among intravenous drug users, who get the virus by sharing needles. More than half the IV drug users were black, according to Dr. Lisa Lee, the CDC's senior epidemiologist for HIV-AIDS.

Also, there was a 4 percent decline in diagnoses from heterosexual contact, which accounts for 34 percent of infections overall but includes more than 46 percent of infections among blacks.

The analysis is based on data from 33 states that conducted confidential, name-based reporting during those years, including, for the first time, New York.

Although federal officials have been tracking the HIV-AIDS epidemic for more than a quarter-century, reporting to the CDC is mandatory only when an infection progresses to acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

But because most people diagnosed with HIV begin taking the highly effective anti-viral drugs that have become common in the past decade, the number of AIDS cases doesn't reflect trends in infection particularly well.

Moreover, it's estimated that a quarter of people living with HIV don't know they're infected.

Adding the information from New York "provides us a much more representative picture of the magnitude of the epidemic in this country," Dr. Valdiserri said, noting that the state accounted for 20 percent of all the diagnoses from the states, with the majority of cases concentrated in New York City.

Source: Augusta Chronicle, The

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