On Wednesday, President Bush approved $39 billion to fight AIDS around the world, nearly triple the $15 billion spent over the previous five years.
"The United States can be proud of . . . its remarkable commitment to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic," said Dr. Daniel R. Kuritzkes, director of AIDS research at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "These new figures from CDC demonstrate that the domestic epidemic needs a similar response."
Since the AIDS epidemic began in 1981, the actual incidence in the United States -- and globally -- has been a matter of controversy. The problem was that researchers used "by guess and by golly" techniques to extrapolate overall HIV numbers from limited data.
In the case of the world numbers, better data led to a recent downward revision, a 40% decline to about 2.5 million new infections each year and a total of about 33 million people living with the virus.
In the past, U.S. figures for HIV were extrapolated from the number of newly diagnosed AIDS cases. But as better treatments have lowered the number of people progressing to full-blown AIDS, those estimates have become more iffy, experts said.
The new numbers rely on newer testing methods that allow technicians to determine whether an HIV infection occurred in the last five months or is an older infection. More states have also begun reporting newly diagnosed HIV infections as well as new AIDS cases.
"These data, which are based on new laboratory technology developed by the CDC, provide the clearest picture to date of the U.S. HIV epidemic, and unfortunately, we are far from winning the battle against this preventable disease," the CDC's Gerberding said.
Using the new estimates for 2006, researchers also reanalyzed the historical data. They concluded that the number of new infections peaked at about 150,000 per year in the mid-1980s, then declined to about 50,000 per year in the early 1990s.
By the end of that decade, the numbers had climbed back up to the current level of about 56,000 and have remained fairly constant ever since, they found.
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thomas.maugh@latimes.com
