Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
BBC News - Monday, 9 September, 2002
Experts from the Public Health Laboratory Service used a new test to identify the rate of new infections.
Last year saw a record number of new HIV diagnoses.
But experts did not know how many were new infections and how many patients had been infected years before, but only recently been diagnosed.
Special tests were carried out on the blood of 33,000 gay men attending 15 clinics across England and Wales between 1995 and 2000.
By checking how mature antibodies were, scientists could see how recent the HIV infection was.
They found one in 50 - 2% - per year become infected with HIV.
'Worrying'
Experts had believed new infections would be concentrated amongst younger men in the 20 to 35-year-old group studied because they took more risks in their sexual behaviour.
But the researchers found there was no difference in HIV incidence across the age range.
Dr John Parry of the PHLS Central Public Health Laboratory, who was one of the researchers in this study, said: "This is a worrying finding because it confirms what we have feared, that 20 years into the HIV epidemic, transmission of this incurable but preventable infection is continuing at a steady rate in gay men."
Dr Noel Gill of the PHLS Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre told BBC News Online: "There's a constant rate of transmission.
"The safe sex message is not being adhered to. Behaviour is not changing."
Will Nutland, head of gay men's health promotion for the Terrence Higgins Trust said the study gave additional information about the rate of new infections.
But he stressed that the PHLS study had identified a 2% risk amongst gay men attending sexual health clinics, not gay men in general.
"They are the ones we are expecting to have put themselves at risk of various symptoms of sexually transmitted infections."
He added: "Since the introduction of new treatments, the number of people living with HIV has increased dramatically.
"There is a bigger pool of HIV positive people to infect uninfected people."
He said the THT had recently run a campaign to warn gay men that not all HIV positive men will admit their status.
"If they don't tell you they are positive, men shouldn't assume they have the same status as themselves."
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