Facts and figures: "One in five [practising] gay men in US has HIV"

From last Saturday's edition of The Sydney Morning Herald:

WASHINGTON: One in five sexually active homosexual men in the US has HIV, and almost half of those who carry the virus do not know they are infected, a study has found.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention tested more than 8000 men in 21 cities in 2008, and found that even as infection rates were climbing among men who have sex with men, young, sexually active gay men and those in minority groups were least likely to know their health status, while the rates of other at-risk groups - heterosexuals and intravenous drug users - were falling.

The findings were published this week to precede US National Gay Men's HIV Awareness Day on Monday.

[...] Cities in the study include Baltimore, where the prevalence of HIV among men who have sex with men was highest at 38 per cent, and Atlanta, where it was lowest at 6 per cent.

In the District of Columbia, where the general HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is one of the highest in the nation, at about 4 per cent, or more than 16,000 adults, the study found a 14 per cent prevalence rate among men who have sex with men.

In the Atlantic region, New York had a rate of 29 per cent, Philadelphia had a rate of 11 per cent and Newark had a rate of 19 per cent.

The more impoverished the men were, the more likely they were to be infected, the study found.

A spokeswoman for the centres said the recent study's findings were similar to those of a study conducted between June 2004 and April 2005, when one in four gay men tested positive for the virus.

However, the percentage of minorities who tested positive had changed dramatically in the three years since the previous study, although black gay men outpaced white and Hispanic men in both studies.

In the earlier study, 46 per cent of gay black men tested positive, compared with 40 per cent in the more recent study.

In the earlier study, Hispanics represented 18 per cent of the infected compared with 23 per cent in the more recent study.

White men comprised 21 per cent of the infected in 2004-05 and 20 per cent in 2008.
[http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/one-in-five-gay-men-in-us-has-hiv-20100924-15qms.html?skin=text-only]

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of St. Wenceslaus, Duke, Martyr, A.D. 2010