CHICAGO (AP)
- A stunning one-third of young gay black men in large U.S. cities
are infected with HIV, another sign of the growing racial divide
in the AIDS epidemic.
The findings,
based on a study released Monday, show that HIV infections are
disturbingly common among gay men of all races in their 20s, especially
considering that they grew up knowing how AIDS spreads.
However, HIV
is particularly rampant among young gay blacks, and experts worry
that these men have missed the safe-sex message that has been
a drumbeat among white homosexual men since the mid-1980s.
The study
found that among young gay men, 3 percent of Asians, 7 percent
of whites, 15 percent of Hispanics and 30 percent of blacks are
infected with the virus.
"That
30 percent is an amazing statistic," said Dr. Helene Gayle,
AIDS chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"When people think `gay,' they think `white.' But the people
still at greatest risk are sexually active gay men, and that cuts
across all races and ethnicities."
The study,
directed by the CDC's Linda Valleroy, was presented at the Eighth
Annual Retrovirus Conference in Chicago. Since this was the first
survey ever done among gays of this age group - 23 to 29 - there
are no previous numbers with which to compare these findings.
Since the
epidemic's start, when AIDS was primarily a disease of gay white
men, the burden of HIV has increasingly shifted to blacks. Now,
just over half of the estimated 40,000 new HIV infections annually
occur among blacks. Among infected women, blacks outnumber whites
almost 4 to 1.
Many worry
that homosexual men have grown complacent about catching HIV because
effective treatments can hold the disease in check. Some of these
gay men may be more likely to have risky sex, such as anal intercourse
without condoms.
The new study
does not reveal whether dangerous sex practices are growing among
the young, but it does show that such habits are common. Almost
half of the men surveyed admitted they had had unprotected anal
sex during the previous six months.
While the
overall infection rate of 12 percent was alarming, the researchers
said they were most surprised by the level of AIDS infection among
the young black men. "It's really horrifying," Valleroy
said.
The survey
was based on testing of 2,401 gay men ages 23 to 29 between 1998
and 2000. They were tested at parks, bars, clubs and other gay
meeting places in Baltimore, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle
and New York City.
Except in
Miami and Seattle, where few blacks were in the study, the infection
rate for blacks was around 30 percent in all the cities.
In general,
AIDS infections have become less common among gay men since the
height of the epidemic in the 1980s. For instance, in New York,
just over half of all gay men of all ages who were tested at venereal
disease clinics in 1988 were infected, compared with 20 percent
in 1997.
Valleroy said
there is no easy explanation for why the disease is so much more
prevalent among young gay blacks. But one reason may be that blacks
are less likely to admit their homosexuality, so they miss the
frequent exhortations for safe sex.
"Being
gay is more hidden among African Americans," she said. "There
is no Gay Men's Health Crisis for African Americans. They tend
not to live in the gay neighborhoods."
Dr. Carlos
del Rio of Emory University in Atlanta, who studies AIDS in inner
cities, noted that the disease largely affects populations on
the edges of the mainstream, including gay men and poor blacks.
"In African
Americans, there is a much greater stigma about being homosexual
than there is among whites," he said. "That makes them
even more marginalized."
Less than
one-third of those who had HIV in the survey knew about their
infection.
An earlier
study by the same group looked at AIDS infections among gay 15-
to 22-year-olds. It found that 14 percent of blacks were infected.
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