AIDS Transmission Between Women Cited
Women infected with the AIDS virus may transmit the virus through sexual activity to other women as well as to men, according to researchers at the New York University Medical Center.
Their conclusion, based on an apparent case of lesbian transmission of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus, appears in the December issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“This is the first such case that I am aware of,” said Michael Marmor, an associate professor of environmental medicine at the medical center.
Previously, sexual transmission of the AIDS virus was known to occur only between two men, or between a man and a woman. The virus also is transmitted by contaminated blood or needles.
“The fact that these women were lesbians is not as important as the fact that they had extensive contact with each other’s potentially infective bodily fluids, such as blood, vaginal secretions and possibly saliva,” Marmor said in a telephone interview.
“The real significance is that we are all at risk for exposure to the AIDS virus given enough intimate contact with potentially infective fluids.”
The case involves a 26-year-old New York City woman who developed fever and enlarged lymph nodes in 1982, about a month after the start of a lesbian relationship with a 25-year-old woman who had already been infected with the the AIDS virus, probably through intravenous drug use.
Both women tested positive for the AIDS virus. An extensive investigation, in which federal health officials also participated, strongly suggested that the virus had been transmitted by lesbian sexual contact, including digital and oral contact with the rectum and vagina.
As a result of “traumatic” sexual activities both women developed vaginal bleeding, which the researchers speculate may have contributed to the transmission of the virus.
“It all seems to fit together,” Marmor said. But the researchers could not prove the case for lesbian transmission of the virus “beyond a shadow of doubt” because the second woman had several heterosexual contacts as well, according to Marmor.
