Toothbrushes, Toilets Not Tied to AIDS Spread

People who share toothbrushes, bathtubs, toilets and towels with AIDS patients run virtually no risk of infection, debunking the myth that the dreaded disease can be spread by casual contact, doctors said today.

Blanket testing of military personnel and calls for the quarantining of AIDS patients are unnecessary and motivated by fear rather than fact, said the physician who spearheaded the research at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center.

The four-year study of 101 people who were close family members of 39 AIDS patients showed no evidence that they had contracted the illness despite sharing toilets, baths, showers and kitchen utensils with the victims.

Many of the family members kissed the AIDS patients on the lips.

One Related Problem

Only one of the 101 family members--a young girl born to an infected mother--ended up having a problem related to the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a usually fatal disease that knocks the body’s infection-fighting machinery out of commission.

“If this kind of contact doesn’t lead to infection, it’s very hard to imagine that casual contact in the workplace would,” said Dr. Gerald H. Friedland, who led the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“I think this study is helpful to AIDS patients because it allows us to tell them that their families and other close contacts are not at risk,” Friedland said. “I think that is wonderfully positive information for patients who get mostly bad news.”

In addition to their own study, the researchers cited unpublished figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control showing that, except for sexual partners and children born to infected mothers, none of the family members of the more than 12,000 of the nation’s known AIDS patients contracted the disease.