AIDS transmission rate plummets in U.S., study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – AIDS transmission rates have plummeted in the United States and only 5 percent of Americans infected with the AIDS virus will infect someone else in any given year, researchers reported on Tuesday.

They said prevention efforts are working, even though the number of people infected with HIV has risen.

The transmission rate has dropped 88 percent since 1984 and 33 percent since 1997, the team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

"For every 100 persons living with HIV today, five or fewer will transmit the virus to an uninfected person in a given year," said David Holtgrave of Johns Hopkins, who led the study. …