Nine New Mystery AIDS Cases Reported

Nine new cases have been found of patients who have symptoms of AIDS but do not appear to be infected with the AIDS virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday.

Since medical experts first described the mysterious syndrome last month during an international AIDS conference in Amsterdam, the CDC said it had received reports of nine new cases in addition to the five cases the health agency reported in Amsterdam.

Last week, the CDC made public details on the first five cases in a report in the “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” the agency’s publication on disease, At the same time, the agency asked doctors to report any similar cases to the CDC.

The new cases described Thursday in the same publication bear striking similarities to the previous cases and most differ sharply from the statistical profile of current AIDS patients.

The mystery patients are older on average than AIDS patients, more evenly distributed between men and women and most have no known risk factors for infections with the AIDS virus.

High-ranking officials of the CDC’s AIDS program have said the 14 patients might all be infected with some unknown microbe, or they might simply be suffering individually from unrelated immune disorders not caused by any infectious agent.