Studies
find lower than expected HIV rate among San Francisco
gays

Three new studies of San Francisco's gay and bisexual men are leading health officials to consider lowering the city's official estimate of new HIV cases based on data showing far lower than expected levels of HIV infections among gays, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. City health officials are planning to meet with a panel of AIDS experts within the next month to discuss the studies' findings.

City officials previously estimated that there have been about 1,000 new HIV infections in San Francisco each year since 2001, but a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the HIV infection rate among gay and bisexual men actually has been halved during the past four years. Instead of 2.2% of gay men in the city becoming infected with HIV each year, as city officials had estimated, the CDC determined that the actual HIV infection rate among gay and bisexual men in the city was only 1.2% annually. Similar studies by San Francisco's Stop AIDS Project suggest similar drops in HIV infection levels.

Although city health officials aren't sure exactly what led to the decrease, they theorize that it may be due to the effects of antiretroviral drugs in lowering the HIV viral loads in HIV-positive people to levels that make passing the virus to others more difficult. Local HIV prevention efforts urging HIV-positive gay men to protect their sex partners also may be playing a role in the reduced infection level, officials add.