The number of HIV infections diagnosed in the UK in 1999 is likely to be the highest for any year in the past decade, according to a report published by the Public Health Laboratory Service.
The PHLS has already received 2,457 reports of new HIV infections and predicts that this figure will rise as cases continue to be reported.
Commenting on the figures, Dr Angus Nicoll (head of the HIV and STD division of the PHLS) said: "Gay men still remain the single largest group at risk for acquiring HIV. However, we have also seen an increase in the number of diagnoses of heterosexually-acquired infections." 1999 was the first year in which the number of diagnoses of heterosexually-acquired HIV was higher than the number of infections acquired through sex between men. Dr Nicoll added: "Much of this increase is the result of initiatives to encourage people to get tested, such as the government's new policy of offering universal antenatal screening to women."
The PHLS also reports that the steady decline in deaths among people with HIV or AIDS, which began in the mid 1990s with the introduction of new combination drug therapies, appears to have stopped. Although the reasons for this levelling out are not clear, Dr Nicoll said: "It may be that many of these deaths occur in people who are only diagnosed at the time they become sick with AIDS, when it can be too late for them to benefit from the new drug therapies. Alternatively, it may represent cases in which the drugs are not effective, perhaps because of the development of resistance. . . . It is important to remember, however, that HIV associated deaths have been reduced to a third of what they were in the mid 1990s."
The PHLS says that estimates published last year indicated that at the end of 1998 there were nearly 30,000 people living in the UK with HIV infection. Around one-third of these remained undiagnosed.