Virus risk, frequency of sex questioned

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 9

Virus risk, frequency of sex questioned

NZPA-AP Chicago Some people with A.I.D.S. (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) had sex 200 times without infecting their spouses while one woman picked up the virus in a single encounter, indicating the frequency of heterosexual relations does not always determine risk, researchers said. The study for the National Centres for Disease Control looked at 80 A.I.D.S. patients — 25 women and 55 men — and their spouses. Two of the men married to women with A.I.D.S. contracted the

virus through sexual contact with their wives, the study found, and 10 of the 55 women whose husbands had A.I.D.S. were infected. Eleven wives remained free of the virus in spite of having had sex with their husbands more than 200 times since the men were exposed to A.1.D.5., researchers said. But one woman contracted the virus after a single sexual experience with her stricken husband. “These data indicate that the risk of ... transmission is not simply a function of the number of sexual contacts with an

infected person,” the researchers wrote to the “Journal of the American Medical Association.” The researchers found condoms were rarely used by the subjects, who had been unaware of the presence of A.I.D.S. In 1983 a year after the first recognised case of A.I.D.S, heterosexual transmission was first reported in the United States.

Less than 2 per cent of A.I.D.S. cases stem from heterosexual relations. A.I.D.S. is spread mainly through sexual intercourse, shared hypodermic needles and from infected mothers to infants. P..