Men who have sex with men might need to get tested for HIV more often.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until now has advised that such men — who make up an estimated 2 percent of the U.S. population but account for 59 percent of HIV diagnoses — be tested at least once a year for the AIDS virus. But the researchers who prepared a new CDC report now suggest testing every three to six months for sexually active gay men.
That advice was based on a finding, in a 21-city analysis of 7,271 men who have sex with men, that 7 percent who had tested negative for HIV within the previous year were HIV-positive when retested for the study.
What’s more, other sexually active gay men and others who aren’t tested also sometimes are unaware they are infected. In all, the CDC, about 20 percent of those who are HIV-positive do not know they are infected — raising the likelihood that they will spread the virus.
Despite declining numbers of AIDS cases and deaths, the CDC said that at the end of 2008 an estimated 1,178,350 Americans were living with HIV. Since the first reports of the disease emerged 30 years ago, 594,496 Americans have died of AIDS.
The study results were published as part of an update on HIV and AIDS the CDC’s latest Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report.
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