{"id":1375,"date":"2011-02-03T21:03:35","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T02:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=1375"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:24:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:24:02","slug":"disparities-in-hiv-diagnoses-and-interpreting-cdc-ese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/disparities-in-hiv-diagnoses-and-interpreting-cdc-ese\/2011\/02\/03\/","title":{"rendered":"Disparities in HIV Diagnoses, and Interpreting CDC-ese"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In anticipation of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/mm6004a1.htm?s_cid=mm6004a1_w\" target=\"_blank\">National Black HIV\/AIDS Awareness Day<\/a> (February 7), the CDC has issued a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/mm6004a2.htm?s_cid=mm6004a2_w\" target=\"_blank\">new report<\/a> on the disparities in HIV diagnoses in the United States.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>During 2005&#8211;2008, blacks\/African Americans accounted for 13.6% of the population in the 37 states and 50.3% of the 156,812 diagnoses of HIV infection during that period &#8230; HIV transmissions in black\/African American males were classified most frequently as male-to-male sexual contact (61.1%), followed by heterosexual contact (23.1%), injection drug use (IDU) (11.9%), and both male-to-male sexual contact and IDU (3.6%)&#8230; Among females, blacks\/African Americans accounted for the largest percentage of diagnoses of HIV infection (65.9%) during 2005&#8211;2008. Most black\/African American females diagnosed with HIV were exposed through heterosexual contact (85.2%), and the next greatest percentage by IDU (14.0%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1377\" title=\"m6004a2f\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/02\/m6004a2f1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"309\" height=\"206\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some additional findings in this report:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>From 2005-2008, new diagnoses increased in black\/African American Males; in all other groups, it was stable (see figure)<\/li>\n<li>The disparity between racial\/ethnic groups was highest among persons aged 13&#8211;24 years, women, and persons with infection attributed to heterosexual contact<\/li>\n<li>In 2008, black\/African American males and females were diagnosed with HIV infection at 8 and 19 times the rates for white males and females; 2 and 4 times the rates for Hispanic\/Latino males and females, respectively<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The authors of this report comment that \u00a0&#8220;the higher rates of diagnoses among blacks\/African Americans suggest that adolescents and adults from this population who are at higher risk for HIV infection <em><strong>might benefit<\/strong><\/em> [emphasis mine] from more frequent testing to facilitate earlier diagnosis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As usual, this is an outstanding report from the kind folks from Atlanta (who must feel this year like they&#8217;ve been tricked into\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/news\/atlanta-weather-winter-weather-826372.html\" target=\"_blank\">living in New England).<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But one of the things I&#8217;ve learned to recognize over the years of reading <em>MMWR <\/em>and other CDC reports, is that when they bring out the word &#8220;might&#8221; &#8212; a classic word from the CDC Manual of Style &#8212; what they really mean is: \u00a0&#8220;We think you should do this but something is keeping us from stating it so bluntly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So let me be so bold: \u00a0More frequent HIV testing is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/mmwr\/preview\/mmwrhtml\/rr5514a1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">recommended for people at high risk for HIV<\/a> &#8212; and the risk is high in certain\u00a0black\/African American communities, <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Health\/WellnessNews\/hiv-community-risk-black-people-experts\/story?id=9887324\" target=\"_blank\">regardless of &#8220;risk factors&#8221;<\/a>, as my colleague Kim Smith has wisely stated.\u00a0Clinicians should be aware of the data presented here so that they can implement these recommendations appropriately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In anticipation of National Black HIV\/AIDS Awareness Day (February 7), the CDC has issued a new report on the disparities in HIV diagnoses in the United States. During 2005&#8211;2008, blacks\/African Americans accounted for 13.6% of the population in the 37 states and 50.3% of the 156,812 diagnoses of HIV infection during that period &#8230; HIV [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,9,10],"tags":[167,279,423,447],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiv","category-patient-care","category-policy","category-research","tag-cdc","tag-disparities","tag-hiv","tag-hiv-testing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}