Longer AIDS Incubation
Half of the homosexual men who become infected with the AIDS virus may remain free of the disease for nearly 10 years, about two years longer than recently reported estimates suggest, a study says.
The median incubation time of 9.8 years is “the best estimate so far,” but medical treatments might make it longer, researcher Andrew Moss said.
He and colleague Peter Bacchetti of the UC San Francisco and San Francisco General Hospital presented the finding in the British journal Nature.
The researchers analyzed three studies that indicated trends in infection rates among San Francisco gay men since 1978 and compared them to monthly totals of new cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
The work concurs with other studies that have suggested that the number of new AIDS cases among San Francisco gay men will decline after this year, Moss said.
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