1.1 million Americans infected with HIV: CDC

Atlanta, October 3: According to the latest release by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 1.1 million Americans are infected with HIVdefine.

While the rates of new infections have remained stable at 56,000 a year, the rise in the HIVdefine-infected population (994,000 in 2003 to 1.1 million in 2006) is strongly associated with increase in life span, thanks to better treatments and new HIV drugs.

CDC expects HIV cases "to keep on increasing over time as treatment prolongs the lives of infected people and new infections outpace deaths" Richard Wolitski, acting Director of CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention said in a telephonic interview.

The new CDC estimates are based on information from new HIV diagnoses taken from 40 states and AIDS diagnoses and deaths taken from all 50 states. A statistical method called "back-calculation" was then applied thereupon.

Interestingly, while the number of new AIDS diagnoses in children under the age of 13 decreased 64 percent over 2003-2006, the majority of new HIV diagnoses occurred in people aged 40 to 44 years.

The AIDS epidemic disproportionately affects blacks of both sexes as well as gay and bisexual men. While African-American’s make up 12 percent of the US population, they account for almost 46 percent HIV cases.

About 35 percent of HIV carriers are white and 18 percent are Hispanic, according to the CDC.

Black women are 18 times more likely than white women to be infected with HIV, whereas, black men are 6 times more likely than white men, the report highlights. Hispanics are 2.6 times more likely than whites to be infected.

Men accounted for about three-fourths of new HIV cases.

As high as 19 percent of the HIV cases were linked to injection drug use or contaminated needles.

The new estimates appear in the October 3 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.