Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - 25 Aug 95
Dr. Ann C. Collier of the University of Washington, Seattle, said a study of more than 100 semen samples taken from 16 HIV-positive men over a two-year period found live and infectious virus 22 percent of the time.
Collier said Friday that the appearance of the virus was intermittent, appearing in the semen from some men during one test, but absent when the same men were tested later.
"In one way, this is good news," said Collier. "If the virus was found more frequently, then the transmission rate of the disease would be much higher."
The bad news, she said, is that nobody can tell when the virus will be present in the semen of HIV-positive men.
"We could find no predictors of who would and who would not be shedding the virus (through their semen)," said Collier, a physician who specializes in infectious diseases.
A report on the study is to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Urology, a peer-reviewed medical journal of the American Urological Association. Researchers from New York University School of Medicine also participated in the study.
HIV virus was found less frequently than 22 percent in earlier semen studies. Collier said her group found more of the virus because great care was taken to start the laboratory work rapidly. Each specimen was placed into a cycle of tests immediately after it was collected. The tests included culturing and also an amplification capable of detecting even a very small population of virus.
In blood tests, all of the patients tested positive for the AIDS virus every time they were examined, the study said.
Collier said even the taking of anti-viral drugs did not assure virus-free semen. The rate of virus detection was the same in patients on AIDS drugs as in patients not taking medications.
"People who are sexually active should be aware that HIV could be in the semen at any time, and that means people should be cautious all of the time," said Collier. "There is no way to look at a person or do an examination or depend on a sexual history that can assure the semen is virus-free. One needs to assume that everybody has it all the time."
Public health authorities recommend that all sexually active people practice safe sex by wearing condoms during each exposure, but even this carries some risk. Only monogamy with a uninfected partner or abstinence assures no sexual transmission of HIV.
Collier said the study should serve as a warning to some couples who have proposed that sperm from an HIV-positive partner be used for artificial insemination. She said this was thought possible
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