AIDS Cases Expected to Double Again This Year

Stanford University Medical Center scientists said Friday that AIDS is spreading by geometric proportions but screening blood donors can help stem transmission of the disease.

Drs. Edgar Engleman and Jeff Lifson, writing in the current issue of Stanford Medicine, said that the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome will get worse.

“Nearly 10,000 cases of AIDS have been documented,” they wrote. “Reported cases doubled in all risk groups in 1984 and are expected to double again in 1985. The true number is probably at least three times and possibly as many as 10 times greater.

“In San Francisco, two to four people are expected to die from AIDS every day next year. This is despite improved screening methods of donor blood and increased awareness of AIDS.”

$1 Billion in Health Costs

Engleman is an associate professor of pathology and director of Stanford’s blood bank. Lifson is a postdoctoral fellow in the pathology department.

The first 7,200 cases of AIDS already have recorded 1.3 million hospital days and have accounted for more than $1 billion in health care costs, they said. Patients had a median survival of 12 months.

Transmission of the disease via blood transfusions accounts for only a small number of AIDS victims, they said.

The actual risk to transfusion recipients is at most one in 100,000, the doctors said. With improved screening methods of donated blood, that number “should become vanishingly small in the future,” they wrote.