The AP 
(6/3, Stobbe) reports that about “1.1 million Americans were living with the AIDS virus in 2008, an increase of about 71,000 from 2006,” according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Thursday.
HealthDay (6/3, Reinberg) reports that the CDC says that each year in the US, “some 50,000 people become newly infected with HIV. Over half of these new infections are among gay and bisexual men, and of these about 50 percent are African-American,” according to the report. In another report in the same issue of MMWR, the CDC “contends that gay and bisexual men might benefit from more frequent HIV testing.”
WebMD (6/2, Hendrick) explains that, according to the report, at the end of “2008, 75% of people living with HIV were men, and 65.7% of them were men who have sex with men.” HIV prevalence rates among “African-Americans were about eight times that of whites,” and HIV prevalence rates for “Hispanics or Latinos were about 2.5 times that of whites.” People between ages “13 and 24 have the highest percentage of undiagnosed HIV, at 58.9%.” The CDC says that the number of people living with HIV continues to rise primarily because of “highly effective drugs that allow people infected with HIV to live longer, healthier lives.”
MedPage Today (6/2, Smith) reported that in the accompanying article, the CDC reported that an “estimated 1,178,350 people were living with HIV at the end of 2008, with an additional 594,496 having died from AIDS since 1981.” Of those currently living with HIV, the agency reported, “20.1% do not know they are infected, which means they are more likely to pass on the virus.” AFP (6/3) also covers the MMWR studies.
