United Kingdom: HIV Infection Rate Pinpointed

One in 50 gay men attending British sexual health clinics has contracted HIV in the previous year, according to researchers. Experts from the Public Health Laboratory Service used a new test to identify the rate of new infections. Last year saw a record number of new HIV diagnoses. But experts did not know how many were new infections and how many patients had been infected years before, but only recently been diagnosed.

Special tests were carried out on the blood of 33,000 gay men attending 15 clinics across England and Wales between 1995 and 2000. By checking how mature antibodies were, scientists could see how recent the HIV infection was. They found one in 50 men -- 2 percent -- per year become infected with HIV. Although experts had believed new infections would be concentrated among men in the 20- to 35-year-old group because they took more sexual risks, the researchers found no difference in HIV incidence across the age range.

Dr. John Perry of the Central PHLS and a researcher on the study said, "This is a worrying finding because it confirms what we have feared, that 20 years into the HIV epidemic, transmission of this incurable but preventable infection is continuing at a steady rate in gay men." Will Nutland, head of gay men's health promotion for the Terrence Higgins Trust, stressed that the PHLS study identified a 2 percent risk among gay men attending sexual health clinics, not gay men in general. "They are the ones we are expecting to have put themselves at risk of various symptoms of sexually transmitted infections," Nutland said. He noted that the trust had recently run a campaign warning gay men that not all HIV-positive men will admit their status.

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