AIDS on Rise; Cases Equal to ’88 Record : Disease: County health officials expect the year’s total to go up as late reports from doctors come in.

AIDS cases in Ventura County are on the rise, health officials said Thursday.

The county recorded 38 new AIDS cases in 1990, equaling the one-year high of 1988 and exceeding 1989’s total of 34 cases, officials said.

Homosexual men continue to account for the majority of AIDS cases--58% of the 1990 total. But that is a decline from 1989, when gays accounted for 76% of the new AIDS cases, health officials said. Meanwhile, the number of new cases attributed to intravenous drug use and heterosexual contacts has risen in recent years.

Since 1982, when the first case was reported, 160 people have been diagnosed with AIDS in Ventura County, and 106 of them have died. Only eight of the county’s AIDS cases have involved women, but five of those cases have occurred in the last three years, and officials expect the number of women with AIDS to increase.

The final 1990 total of AIDS cases is likely to rise in the next few weeks as late reports from physicians come in, said Martina Rippey, a public health nurse who collects data for the county.

And the true extent of AIDS and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus that causes it may be even worse than the new figures suggest, said Dr. John Prichard, who runs the immunology clinic at the Ventura County Medical Center.

“We’re seeing an ever-increasing amount of HIV disease,” Prichard said, referring to people who have contracted the AIDS virus but have not yet developed AIDS. Thanks to AZT and other drugs, those patients have delayed the onset of symptoms, he said. Eventually, Prichard said, “many epidemiologists are predicting a second wave of the AIDS epidemic.”

In addition, Prichard said, “we’re starting to see an increasing number of women infected” with the HIV virus.

Judith Overmyer, nurse manager of the immunology clinic, said that about 10 of its patients are women. The clinic’s patients either have AIDS or are HIV-positive. “A couple were intravenous drug users,” Overmyer said, “but the majority are heterosexual partners of IV drug users.”

She said many women who are married or in a steady relationship get a false sense of security, unaware that their partner is bisexual or an occasional IV user. “The word we try to get out is, you can’t trust anybody,” Overmyer said.

Prichard said that as more women become infected with the AIDS virus, more children will be infected. About one-third of the infants born to women carrying the HIV virus are infected, he said.

Prichard said he also has noticed an increase in HIV infections among young people. No figures were available, but Prichard said: “It’s my opinion that the dramatic changes we saw in sex behavior among gay men over 30 . . . is not being reflected in the younger age groups.”

The clinic, offered every two weeks at Ventura County Medical Center, currently sees about 100 patients, Overmyer said.

She said about one-third have tested positive for the HIV virus but show no symptoms; a third have symptoms of AIDS-Related Complex, such as persistent night sweats, chronic fatigue, swollen glands and unexplained weight loss; and a third have full-blown cases of AIDS, usually characterized by a form of pneumonia called Pneumocystis carinii.

Despite the increase in AIDS cases, Overmyer said, “it’s not the same disease it was in the early ‘80s, when if you had the disease you were dead.”

With early diagnosis, she said, a person infected with the HIV virus can bolster the immune system with AZT, good nutrition and living habits and emotional counseling.

“We’re looking at it like hypertension or diabetes,” she said. “We can’t cure it, but we can perhaps keep you well.”