WASHINGTON - HIV testing rates have remained low in the United States this decade, with only about one-fifth of people at high risk for infection getting a test in any given year, according to a study published on Monday.
The study also found that many more people at high risk of HIV infection — men who have sex with men, injection drug users and others — say they plan to get tested than actually do get tested.
“We know that there are about 1.1 million Americans infected with HIV. And we know that about 25 percent of them don’t know that they’re infected,” Brian Pence, an epidemiologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.
Those people who are unaware they are infected may be causing more than half of new U.S. human immunodeficiency virus infections, making an expansion of testing a key step toward curbing the spread of the virus that causes AIDS, Pence added.
The researchers examined responses from about 147,000 people nationwide aged 18 to 64 in U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health surveys from 2000 through 2005.
“Rates of past-year HIV testing remained constant and low throughout the study period,” the researchers wrote in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
They found that 10 percent of all respondents reported they had been tested in the past year, and that a total of 38 percent reported they had ever been tested.
“Large differences in testing rates according to race and sex remained relatively constant, with minority females reporting the highest rates of testing and white males reporting the lowest rates,” the researchers added.
Among people classified as at high risk of infection, 22 percent got tested in the prior year.
And only about half of those got the tests on their own initiative. The other half underwent tests as part of medical checkups, health insurance applications, entering the military or some other reason, the researchers said.
Nineteen percent of those classified as at medium risk of infection got tested in any given year.
The researchers looked at the percentage of people in various groups who said they intended to get tested in the coming year and compared that to the percentage who actually got tested in the previous year.
While 27 percent of people at highest risk for infection said they planned to have an HIV test in the coming year, only 11 percent had actually sought out a test in the prior year.
“The (AIDS prevention) information is getting out there. High-risk groups are appropriately assessing their risk and are interested in testing. And yet there’s this gap between intention and action,” Pence said.
The researchers said that nearly half of HIV tests were given as part of medical checkups or prenatal care, suggesting that policy initiatives to integrate testing into routine medical care have had some success.
WHy such depressing topic today?
Surprised u haven’t posted this yet…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071113/ap_on_re_us/aids_transplants;_ylt=Aurs.RfdJgpZbJXy_ftt9r2s0NUE
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CHICAGO - An organ donor infected four transplant patients with the AIDS virus in what a donor group says is the first such transmission in the U.S. in at least 13 years.**The transplants occurred in January at three Chicago hospitals. The patients infected with HIV and the virus for hepatitis C did not learn of their status until the last two weeks, according to medical officials. Dr. Michael Millis, chief of the transplantation program at the University of Chicago Hospitals, said his staff was told of the problem on Nov. 1, and brought in the two patients who had transplants there for testing the next morning. “It was very surprising and devastating for them, I’ll be honest, just as it would be for any of us,” Millis said. Initial tests on the donor for HIV, hepatitis and other conditions came back negative, most likely because the donor had acquired the infections in the last three weeks before death. Personal details about the donor were not released by medical official officials, who cited privacy laws. Based on the negative test results, doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Rush University Medical Center and the University of Chicago Medical Center went ahead with the transplants. Officials did not say which organs were transplanted. The right procedures were followed in testing the donor, said Alison Smith, vice president for operations at Gift of Hope. Joel Newman, a spokesman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, said there has not been another known case of HIV being transmitted from a donor to a recipient since federal high-risk donor guidelines were adopted in 1994. Those guidelines were made in response to a 1985 case, when the AIDS virus was still relatively new and few safeguards were in place to prevent transmission. Newman said Tuesday that officials were checking to see if there were any other similar cases before 1994. Since the 1985 case, in which AIDS killed three patients who’d received organs from a Virginia man, there have been more than 400,000 organ transplants in the U.S. without a reported case of transmission through organs. Millis said he thinks the process can be improved but may never be completely failproof. “The organ supply is extraordinarily safe, but this has demonstrated that it’s not 100 percent safe and it is never going to be 100 percent safe, at least with technology we have today,” Millis said
[QUOTE]
HIV testing rates have remained low in the United States this decade, with only about one-fifth of people at high risk for infection getting a test in any given year, according to a study published on Monday.
The study also found that many more people at high risk of HIV infection — men who have sex with men, injection drug users and others — say they plan to get tested than actually do get tested.
[/QUOTE]
This is really sad to say but I have had SO many AIDS tests that it makes me wonder about the whole thing. Every time you get pg and two more times during the pregnancy, they test you. So lets see, I've had 3 succesful pregnancies since 2001 and 2 miscarriages so thats a total of 12 to 15 tests within a span of 5 years!!!! SHEESH.
The sad thing is that the people who NEED to be tested are NOT seeing doctors and having things taken care of. A mother with Aiids does not have to pass it on to her child. But the healthcare system here is just nuts...I mean they test the people who have health care and can afford and have the time and ability to care....those who do NOT are the ones who are suffering here.
This is really sad to say but I have had SO many AIDS tests that it makes me wonder about the whole thing. Every time you get pg and two more times during the pregnancy, they test you. So lets see, I've had 3 succesful pregnancies since 2001 and 2 miscarriages so thats a total of 12 to 15 tests within a span of 5 years!!!! SHEESH.
The sad thing is that the people who NEED to be tested are NOT seeing doctors and having things taken care of. A mother with Aiids does not have to pass it on to her child. But the healthcare system here is just nuts...I mean they test the people who have health care and can afford and have the time and ability to care....those who do NOT are the ones who are suffering here.
Thats the thing...30 states have banned the mandatory tests...Most people just think that they would never get it and infect others while they r at it.Monogamous relationship comes after the inumerable test drives which sometimes prove to be fatal
One thing I was thinking about was people who infect their partners by withholding the information .They should be charged for murder as of now that is what they actually are doing.What do you guys think??
