Blood Tests Show 131 in County Exposed to AIDS

Blood tests given by Orange County health officials since May show that 131 people have been exposed to the AIDS virus, including nine female prostitutes, all drug users, who volunteered to take the tests while incarcerated in Orange County Jail.

Health officials cautioned Thursday, however, that the tests prove only that the subjects developed antibodies to the disease, meaning they were exposed to the virus and not necessarily that they will develop acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

A county health spokeswoman said none of the women tested have developed the disease.

County health officials also said there is relatively little chance that the prostitutes will spread AIDS through sexual contact with men.

Tests Offered Drug Abusers

“We have reason to believe all or most (of the prostitutes) are infected” with the AIDS virus, said Dr. Thomas Prendergast, chief of the county Health Department’s disease control unit. “We think the risk of transmission is . . . very low.

“If we find a man who (tests) positive and whose only source of the disease is a . . . drug-using prostitute, he will be the first one,” Prendergast said. He added, however, that “certainly in other parts of the country there have been cases so attributed.”

The blood tests have been offered to women at County Jail who are known drug abusers and who have used intravenous injections--a high-risk group for contracting AIDS. Almost without exception, Prendergast said, such women also happen to be prostitutes.

The prostitutes, most of whom are no longer in jail, “are important as individuals who might lead us to understand better how often . . . this disease spreads from heterosexual conduct,” Prendergast said. “It’s not common, but it occurs.”

Screening by Red Cross

Since the county’s testing began in May, there has yet to be a case in which a person who tested positive was exposed to the virus only through heterosexual contact, Prendergast said.

In addition to blood tests given to about 400 female drug users at the jail, the county tested 683 other people through the end of September, a county health spokeswoman said.

Moreover, of 60,000 people screened in Orange County by the Red Cross, only about 25 have tested positive and each was either a gay or bisexual male, Prendergast said.

Prendergast said officials would like to test men who have had sexual contact with the prostitutes, but “we have not been terribly successful” because of the prostitutes’ reluctance to cooperate.

Nevertheless, there is no evidence that exposure to AIDS virus among prostitutes locally is increasing rapidly.

One of the prostitutes reacted positively to a more sophisticated test, indicating that she had the virus at the time she was tested, Prendergast said. That prostitute was pregnant, as was another of the jailed prostitutes, and later gave birth to twins at a local hospital.

It is not unusual for newborn children to have AIDS antibodies passed on from exposed mothers, or even to develop the disease. But a spokesman for UCI Medical Center, where the twins were born, said Thursday that the condition of the children could not be disclosed.

Three Female Deaths

In Orange County, there have been only three documented cases of female deaths attributed to AIDS, a county health spokeswoman said. One was an intravenous drug user, one was believed to have contracted the disease during a blood transfusion, and the third was an 18-month-old child.

No comparable figures were available for men.

Dr. Harold Jaffe, who heads the AIDS Activity Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, said the presence of AIDS antibodies indicating prostitutes’ contact with the virus is “not a new development and it doesn’t teach us anything new.”

Only 142 of the 14,125 AIDS cases in the United States are believed to have been caused by heterosexual contact, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control. Fewer than 1% of heterosexuals are believed to carry the AIDS virus, compared to about 40% to 60% of homosexual men in San Francisco, according to the centers.