50% of Carriers to Get AIDS, Study Reports
Half the people infected with the AIDS virus will go on to develop the fatal disease within six years, and 75% will become ill with either AIDS or AIDS-related conditions, researchers reported Saturday.
“This is the first time anyone has actually said this in print,” UC San Francisco researcher Andrew Moss said about work by his research team that was published in the British Medical Journal.
About 1 million Americans are believed to be infected with the virus. Estimates of the proportion who will develop the disease have generally run about 30%, but some believe the figure may be closer to 80%.
Moss, an associate professor of epidemiology at UC San Francisco and San Francisco General Hospital, said the figures stemmed from a three-year study that was the first to base the predictions of progression to AIDS or AIDS-related complex on observed changes in patients’ blood tests.
Previously, figures on the probability of developing AIDS were based on estimates and projections.
“What we saw was that the number of those showing no effects from HIV infection is very small,” Moss said. “This means that if you are infected with the AIDS virus, you will almost certainly go on to get AIDS.”
Researchers led by Moss followed 288 men with human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, for three years to determine how many would contract AIDS or AIDS-related complex. Twenty-two percent progressed to active AIDS and another 19% to AIDS-related complex over the study period.
Moss based his higher six-year percentages on the fact that 24% showed abnormalities in their blood that usually are highly predictive of AIDS or AIDS-related complex.
Moss and his colleagues identified five specific “markers” in blood found to predict progression to AIDS.
Change in Markers
One of the most striking features of the study, Moss said, was the change in markers in blood of men infected with the AIDS virus but not yet ill with AIDS or AIDS-related complex.
“Clearly, the subjects who have progressed to AIDS do not represent a simple selecting out of a subgroup at risk, leaving the rest unaffected,” Moss said. “On the contrary, the prognosis for the rest (of the study group) is worsening over time, two-thirds showing AIDS or ARC or laboratory results that are highly predictive of AIDS.”
The researchers also said their estimates are very conservative.
“HIV infection is much more serious than we thought in the early days,” Moss said. “It may take eight or nine years, but eventually the infected person will probably get AIDS.”
