Washington Blade: CDC To Report 50% Rise In HIV Infections

UPDATE: For those who didn't read the full Blade report, I should have made it more clear that the below rise in counted HIV infections is primarily due to the better reporting under stricter CDC guidelines. The news remains grim, but the upside will be better funding to address the actual case load.

The Washington Blade reports that the CDC is about to release disturbing new data indicating an unprecedented 50% rise in HIV infections. The rise is driven by better reporting methods.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is mulling over when to release alarming new statistics showing that as many as 50 percent more people are being infected with HIV each year in the United States than originally reported by the government.

According to AIDS advocacy groups familiar with the CDC, middle level officials at the disease prevention agency have quietly confided in colleagues in professional and scientific circles that the number of new HIV infections now appears to be as high as 58,000 to 63,000 cases in the most recent 12-month period.

On its web site this week, the CDC left unchanged its longstanding estimate that about 40,000 Americans per year become infected with HIV, a figure it says has remained “relatively stable” for most of the past decade.

CDC officials have told leaders of AIDS advocacy groups that the new figures are being withheld while they are subjected to a rigorous peer review process by an unidentified scientific journal, which is expected to publish the findings within the next few months.

Others familiar with the CDC have said CDC would likely publish the new data in its own journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “It seems to be a poorly kept secret,” said Michael Weinstein, president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “Everybody who has dealings with the CDC is talking about it.”

A fifty percent rise. FIFTY. Completely depressing. I really don't know what else to say.

Yesterday the CDC released other data indicated that a record 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the U.S. last year, but says that the new number is partially due to better detection and reporting methods, similar to the HIV rise reported above. Syphilis and gonorrhea are also rising again after hitting recent record lows. "Super-bug" or drug-resistant gonorrhea is rising even faster.