Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1985. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Friday, May 17, 1985
"This tells us that there is a chronic carrier state of this infection," said Dr. Harold W. Jaffe of the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
No one knows whether these carriers will remain free of AIDS or whether they someday will get the disease. But the researchers said their work underscores the importance of tracking down donors who have transmitted AIDS through transfusions so they can be prevented from giving blood again.
"Probably we're talking about an infection that, at least in some people, can be present for years," said Jaffe. "The infected person may not become ill but yet could infect others, at least through transfusions and presumably sexually as well."
Blood banks recently began screening donated blood for antibodies to the AIDS virus. Blood that contains the antibodies is discarded.
Some experts have expressed concern that a few people may have the AIDS virus in their blood but not produce any of the tell-tale antibodies.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome attacks the body's immune system and is most likely to strike homosexuals, abusers of injectable drugs and hemophiliacs. It is apparently spread by sexual contact, contaminated needles and blood transfusions, but not by casual contact.
As of May 6, 1985, AIDS had struck 10,050 people in the United States and claimed 4,963 lives since 1979.
In the latest study, all the donors with virus in their blood also produced antibodies. Presumably their blood would have been rejected if the screening test had been available when they made their donations.
"I think this is reassuring in the sense that you ought to pick up the great majority of infected people with this test," Jaffe said.
So far, 152 of the 10,050 AIDS victims in the United States have caught the disease from blood transfusions. In all of these cases that have been investigated, doctors have been able to find at least one donor who had antibodies to the AIDS virus, a sign of prior infection.
The latest research was undertaken to learn how long these infections persist. They found that in some cases, people have carried the AIDS virus in their bodies for more than four years without showing any outward symptoms of the disease.
The research, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, was based on a study of 24 cases in which people apparently got AIDS from transfusions.
Many of the sick people had received blood from more than one donor. The researchers investigated 25 donors whom they considered to be at high risk for AIDS. Among these were homosexual men, intravenous drug users and people with persistent swollen lymph glands.
They examined the donors between 12 and 52 months after they gave blood, and 22 of them still carried the AIDS virus in their bodies. Of these 22 people, 15 were completely free of the disease, while two had contracted AIDS and five had swollen glands.
The virus that seems to cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome is known as HTLV-3 or LAV.
"These data suggest that most high-risk blood donors implicated in the transmission of HTLV-3-LAV are chronic carriers of the virus who have minimal or no symptoms," the researchers wrote.
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