Fewer young adults may be catching AIDS now than just a few years ago, but health experts are not quite ready to declare victory.
New data from New York state, which has the country's worst AIDS problem, show a sharp drop in new infections among both pregnant women and teenagers treated at venereal disease clinics."We should view these data with caution but with hope that we are slowing HIV infections," said Dr. Thomas Quinn of Johns Hopkins University.
The latest information, presented at an AIDS meeting Wednesday, agrees with other recent reports showing that the overall spread of AIDS has slowed in the United States during the 1990s.
On Tuesday, Dr. Robert Biggar of the National Cancer Institute estimated that about 600,000 Americans are now infected with HIV, the AIDS virus. More people are dying from the AIDS virus these days than are catching it.
However, experts cautioned that the epidemic's apparent decline among the young in New York may not mirror trends elsewhere, especially the rural South, where many fear the infection is spreading among heterosexuals.
Dr. Lucia V. Torian of the New York City Department of Health reviewed anonymous AIDS testing done on 15,784 young people treated at clinics for sexually transmitted diseases between 1990 and 1994.
The infection rate among teenagers fell from 1.6 percent in 1990 to half of 1 percent in 1994. Among those in their early 20s, it dropped from 5.4 percent to 2.1 percent.
The prevalence of HIV infection fell in all ethnic groups and risk categories, even in people with genital sores, "reversing a trend we've been seeing since 1988," said Torian.