AIDS cases are increasing among women, even in U.S.

Sex has supplanted intravenous drug use as the most frequent route to HIV/AIDS infection for women, according to a panel of experts.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Feb. 13, 2006.

Washington -- The face of AIDS is just as likely to be that of a woman as a man.

In 2005, about one-half of people infected with HIV globally were women, according to data presented last month at a Capitol Hill briefing.

In the United States, women represent more than one in three new HIV infections and one in four new AIDS cases.

HIV is most often transmitted to women through heterosexual sex and during their childbearing years, according to data provided by amFAR -- Foundation for AIDS Research, which sponsored the briefing with the Society for Women's Health Research and Women's Policy Inc.

Black and Hispanic women make up a disproportionate amount of new AIDS cases, said Lynn Paxton, MD, MPH, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's division on HIV/AIDS prevention.

Although black women represent only 13% of the U.S. population, they account for 67% of AIDS cases among women, Dr. Paxton said. Hispanic women, 11% of the population, account for 16% of women with AIDS.

The route to infection has undergone a major shift in the past 20 years, she noted. In 1985, transmission through injection drug use was responsible for 53% of AIDS cases among the nation's women, while, by 2003, transmission via heterosexual sex was responsible for 71% of cases.