25 Years of AIDS
Washington Times
Joyce Howard Price
(06.02.06)
On Friday, CDC published an analysis of the successes and failures in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS in the United States over the past 25 years.
Since it was first described in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published June 5, 1981, AIDS has "become one of the greatest public challenges both nationally and globally," having claimed the lives of at least 22 million people worldwide and more than 500,000 in the United States, CDC epidemiologists said. And though combination drug therapies that became widely available in the 1990s now allow patients to live longer, "HIV/AIDS remains a potentially deadly chronic disease," said the authors.
Though the first US diagnoses of AIDS occurred in young white gay men, the disease has since spread to take a heavy toll on minorities and women. While comprising just 13 percent of the US population, blacks accounted for more than half of new HIV diagnoses, according to federal data.
In 1987, heterosexual transmission accounted for about 6 percent of AIDS cases. Now, 30 percent of HIV/AIDS diagnoses are among heterosexuals. Women are especially vulnerable to HIV during sexual intercourse; in 2002, HIV infection was the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 25-34, CDC said.
CDC spokesperson Karen Hunter said the agency's "biggest success to date" is the reduction in mother-to-child HIV transmission. In the epidemic's early years, about 30 percent of babies born to HIV-positive women became infected. That figure is now less than 2 percent.
However, efforts to address HIV transmission among men who have sex with men have been less successful. "Men who have sex with other men account for approximately 45 percent of newly reported HIV/AIDS diagnoses, and nearly 54 percent of cumulative AIDS diagnoses," the report said.
The analysis, "Twenty-Five Years of HIV/AIDS - United States, 1981-2006," was published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (2006;55(21):585-589).