Tap water may be a major source of a common bacterial infection affecting thousands of AIDS patients in the United States, researchers said Thursday.
A study involving patients with advanced AIDS found strains of microorganisms called Mycobacterium avium complex, or MAC, in a variety of potable water sources, including municipal water, well water and hospital water systems.Although healthy people are not affected by MAC, those with severely impaired immune systems are highly vulnerable to infection by the bacterium, which can cause fever, weight loss and sluggishness.
Dr. Fordham von Reyn of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H., said 40 percent of the 50,000 to 60,000 Americans diagnosed each year with acquired immune deficiency syndrome will develop MAC infections within two years.
"It shortens survival by about half among those who get it," said von Reyn, lead author of a study in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Although scientists had previously recovered samples of the bacterium from sources including soil, food, dairy products and animals, von Reyn said this is the first time they have made a direct link between AIDS patients with MAC and a probable source of their infections.