San Francisco Chronicle; Thursday, August 22, 1991
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

In a survey that obtained detailed and confidential answers from 14,000 people across the country, reseachers found that about 47 percent of the men and women who said they used intravenous drugs had not sought testing and that among men who said they had engaged in homosexual activity within the past five years, 38 percent had never been tested.

The survey was conducted by the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UC San Francisco. It was designed to give prevention workers the clearest evidence yet for aiming their campaigns toward specific segments of the population, such as minority groups, gays and even the elderly, according to Joseph Catania, who led the study.

More than two-thirds of the men and women who were asked by mail to submit to telephone interviews last winter agreed to answer the questions, Catania said, and reams of information are still being analyzed by computer.

When the analysis is complete, it will provide insights into the prevalence of high-risk sexual behavior in small towns as well as the 20 central cities where the epidemic has taken its greatest toll, Catania said.

Thomas Coates, co-director of the study, said the study's preliminary results pose a "good news-bad news situation."

It's good, he said, because it shows that at least 60 percent of the people whose past behavior has placed them at highest risk for AIDS have in fact been tested and know that they must protect their sexual partners.

But the bad side is that so many people who may be infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, don't know it and may already be spreading the infection to others, he said.

The survey included men and women ranging in age from 18 to 75 and studied a cross section of the American population.

Among those considered at high risk for AIDS were people who had two or more sexual partners within the previous year; people who underwent blood transfusions in the years between 1977 and 1985, before methods to screen blood for HIV were in use; people who had used intravenous drugs within the previous five years and those whose sex partners were in the high-risk groups.

A full analysis of the survey, financed by the National Institute for Mental Health, is expected to be completed this fall. Other members of the UCSF AIDS prevention study team were Ronald D. Stall, John Peterson and Barbara Marin.

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