Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - Thursday, 5 December 1996.
The findings reported in this week's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association were based on a survey of 4,147 military service applicants who tested positive for HIV. Of these, 10 committed suicide, compared with 24 suicide deaths among 12,437 applicants who tested HIV-negative.
According to the authors, a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers led by Dr. Andrew Dannenberg, this study is among the first to look at the risk of suicide among people newly diagnosed with HIV who were still asymptomatic -- that is, without symptoms of AIDS.
Dannenberg and his colleagues used the National Death Index, which logs information about the causes of most deaths in the United States. They looked at the causes of death for all military applicants who tested positive for HIV between October 1985 to December 1993.
"Compared with HIV-negative applicants excluded from military service due to other medical conditions, asymptomatic HIV-positive military service applicants did not have a statistically significant increased risk of death from suicide during the period studied," the authors write.
All 34 applicants who died from suicide were male. Most were white and not married.
But the researchers point to other studies showing that HIV-infected people who develop full-blown AIDS are 7 to 36 times more likely to commit suicide.
"It may be appropriate for clinicians to ask persons with HIV infection about suicide risk factors (such as depression) during initial counseling and subsequent medical care," they conclude.
They also note that the new findings may ease concerns that the over-the-counter home AIDS tests recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may cause an increase in suicidal behavior. SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association (1996;276:1743-1746)
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