The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a snapshot of HIV infection in the country on January 29. The report showed that about a half of one percent of adults ages 18 to 49 living in households are also living with HIV, Reuters/Yahoo News reports (news.yahoo.com, 1/29), putting the number of HIV-positive people in the U.S. at about 600,000. The study excluded people who are incarcerated, homeless and in institutions.
The study, which included 11,928 adults, confirms other research that show that black men are more likely than any other group of Americans to be HIV positive. Black men ages 40 to 49 had the highest HIV infection rate, at close to 4 percent. What’s more, people with genital herpes were 15 times more likely to also be HIV positive.
The findings do not include data about how many people are newly infected with HIV each year. Some AIDS experts and activists believe that these numbers, which are expected to be released soon, might put the number of new HIV infections nearly 50 percent higher than was previously expected—at 55,000 or 60,000, instead of 40,000.
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