HIV Among Black Women 5 Times Higher Than Previously Thought: Study: As the health community geared up to recognize National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day today, startling new research revealed that the disease is five times more prevalent among African-American women than previously thought.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 32 African-American women will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime. But a national team of AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere say they are surprised and dismayed by the results of a new study they conducted, showing that the yearly number of new cases of HIV infection among black women is five times previous estimates from the CDC.
The team, called the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN), announced results from its HPTN 064 Women's HIV Seroincidence Study (ISIS) this week, which found that among 2,099 women ages 18 to 44, 88 percent of whom were black, 1.5 percent (32 women) tested positive at the outset of the study, even though they all thought they were negative. Among those who initially tested negative for HIV, the rate of new infections was 0.24 percent within a year after joining the study.
