Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1986. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International - July 23, 1986
The researchers offered no evidence that people living with AIDS patients risked coming down with the ailment. But in letters to a scientific journal they expressed caution about the study, which has been widely cited in support of the belief that acquired immune deficiency syndrome cannot be casually transmitted.
The number of people involved in the study was too small and the study was conducted over too short a time, the researchers said.
"We are not arguing that the risks are in fact high," Dr. Clement J. McDonald and Michael P. Rogers of the Indiana University School of Medicine said in a letter in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. "But the small sample size on which the authors based their conclusions does not insure that the risk is inconsequential."
The two wrote one of three letters questioning the results of the New York study reported in the magazine's issue of Feb. 6. The study involved 101 people who lived with AIDS victims for at least three months.
The study concluded there was "minimal or no risk" of becoming infected with the virus that can cause the disease, even by sharing toothbrushes, razors and toilets with AIDS carriers.
But in the three letters the researchers challenged the size of the sample, whether the household members had been exposed long enough to the AIDS patients to acquire the virus and whether the tests used to check whether they had been infected with the virus were reliable.
Authors Defend Study
The authors of the New York study -seven researchers from the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and a doctor from the Federal Centers for Disease Control - defended their findings in a letter in the current issue of The Journal of Medicine, saying follow-up testing on the subjects since their research was published found no sign of infection with the AIDS virus. The original study was conducted from October 1984 through April 1985.
"Although it cannot be proved that the risk of household tramission is zero, our study and several others indicated that it is certainly extremely and reassuringly low," they said.
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