AEGiS-UPI: Report: 99% of Gay Men Infected Will Get AIDS

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1988. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Report: 99% of Gay Men Infected Will Get AIDS

United Press International; 1510 H St. N.W. Washington DC 20005 Main Phone Switchboard : 202-898-8000 FAX : 202-898-8057 or 202-898-8147 E-mail us: info@upi.com - Friday, 3 June 1988

WASHINGTON - Using a mathematical model, researchers have calculated that virtually all homosexual men infected with the AIDS virus will develop AIDS within an average of eight years.

In an article in the journal Science on Thursday, the three scientists said their model, which used data on 84 homosexual and bisexual men, showed that 99 percent or "almost all HIV-1-infected homosexual men will eventually develop AIDS if they do not die from other causes."

HIV-1, the human immunodeficiency virus, is the microbe that causes AIDS.

But they cautioned, "It may still be too early to predict the exact proportion of infected homosexual and bisexual men who will develop AIDS."

"In 15 to 20 years, we will be able to say with 99 percent confidence" what proportion of those infected will get AIDS," said Kung-Jong Lui, the lead researcher on the study. "But since most of the people studied were only infected a few years ago, the researchers can say with just 90 percent certainty that between 40 and 100 percent of men infected will get AIDS after an incubation period of four to 15 years."

Lui is a mathematic epidemiologist at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. His co-workers were from the CDC and the department of public health in San Francisco.

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