Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - Tuesday, August 26, 1997 - Page A2
Chronicle Staff Report
Anal sex, failure to use condoms, injection drug use and the presence of a sexually transmitted disease are the strongest predictors of AIDS infection, the study found.
Dr. Nancy Padian, an AIDS researcher at the University of California in San Francisco, and her colleagues have just completed the nation's most extensive study of risk factors in AIDS transmission among heterosexual couples. They found infections of women by men occurred in only 9 of every 10,000 sexual encounters. And even that low rate was eight times higher than it was for men infected by women, the Padian study showed. The study, published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, followed 82 HIV-infected women and their male partners, as well as 360 HIV-infected men and their female partners for 10 years.
The volunteers for the study were interviewed and given physical exams every six months and also counseled during each visit about safe sexual practices.
The researchers said they observed dramatic behavior changes during the study. For example, when the study began, no couple was abstaining from sex, only 32.2 percent ever used a condom and 37.9 percent were having anal sex. By the final follow-up visit 10 years later, 14.5 percent said they abstained from sex, 74 percent used condoms and only 8.1 percent had anal sex. "We now know many of the risk factors that affect the likelihood of transmission between uninfected individuals and their heterosexual partners," Padian said. "Elimination or modification of these factors would result in reduced transmission of HIV."
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