
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 25, 1995                   TAG: 9511270042
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

DATA: HIV HITS YOUNG MEN HARD

One of every 92 young American men - those ages 27 to 39 - may be battling the AIDS virus, according to the most precise estimates yet of the epidemic's toll.

The sobering numbers show minorities are especially hard hit, with one of every 33 young black men estimated to be infected in 1993, according to the report in this week's journal Science. The 1993 data is the latest available.

If the trend continues, ``the threat of AIDS may become a rite of passage'' for young people, said study author Philip Rosenberg of the National Cancer Institute. ``That's a very disturbing future.''

The government already has warned that AIDS is threatening more and more young adults. In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that AIDS in 1993 became the No. 1 killer of people ages 25 to 44.

If AIDS was killing that many, how many others were alive with HIV, posing the potential for the disease's continued spread? And because HIV typically causes no symptoms for 10 years, just how young were these people when they caught it?

Rosenberg used CDC data on reported AIDS cases and fatalities. He then used a process called ``backcalculation,'' statistics on AIDS mortality, population data and information on the disease's incubation period to estimate the number of HIV infections as of Jan. 1, 1993.

``It is important to recognize that backcalculated estimates are based on modeling rather than direct data and are very uncertain,'' he acknowledged in explaining his findings.

Nevertheless, Rosenberg's study is the most precise look to date at HIV prevalence among young Americans.

People ages 18 to 25 experienced a rapid rise in HIV infections between 1986 and 1992, during the same time when older Americans' risk of HIV infection leveled off, Rosenberg found.

Those youthful infections meant people ages 27 to 39 were the most likely to be alive with HIV in January 1993, he reported. He calculated that one of every 139 young white men was living with HIV then, as was one in 33 young black men and one in 60 Hispanics.

Women were over four times less likely to be infected.

by CNB