AIDS CONFERENCE FILE : Cigarette Smoking May Speed Up Pace of Illness, Study Shows
Cigarette smoking may accelerate the development of AIDS in men infected with the AIDS virus, according to UC Berkeley researchers who found that smokers were nearly twice as likely as nonsmokers to develop AIDS or to die during a 4 1/2-year period studied.
The researchers found that 33% of the smokers and 27% of the nonsmokers in the study of 1,000 men with HIV infection developed AIDS during the study period. Fifteen percent of the smokers and 12% of the nonsmokers died. Smokers were almost twice as likely to develop oral thrush, an early symptom of AIDS virus infection.
It is not understood why smoking might affect the development of AIDS, though it is known that smoking directly affects immune system cells.
Sixty-one percent of a closely studied group of 342 gay men infected with the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus between 1977 and 1980 have developed AIDS within 10 to 13 years of becoming infected, and an additional 18% have developed related illnesses, according to updated statistics from the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
The researchers, updating previously reported data, showed how the risk of AIDS relates directly to the duration of infection, increasing from 1% within two years, to 8% at four years, 20% at six years, 36% at eight years, 49% at 10 years and 53% at 11.1 years.
The researchers have also found that only 14% of the gay men infected for 10 years or more have normal or near-normal numbers of T-4 lymphocytes, which are attacked by the AIDS virus, in their circulation.
The AIDS virus is more easily passed from men to women during sex than from women to men. In a study of about 325 California couples with one partner infected with HIV, researchers found that fewer than 2% of 58 males with HIV-infected female sex partners also became infected over a five-year period. The average number of sexual contacts in the couples was 300 to 400 over five years. In contrast, about 20% of 269 women whose male sex partners were HIV-infected became infected with the devastating virus over five years.
