HIV: More Voluntary Testing Recommended

Two research articles^1,2 and an editorial³ in the February 10, 2005 New England Journal of Medicine suggested that routine HIV testing be expanded outside of high-risk group to the U.S. general population, or to all but those at lowest risk. Current U.S. CDC guidelines recommend routine use of screening in populations with more than 1% of people infected, but the new articles used different statistical analyses of existing data to show that some HIV screening could be cost effective even in populations with only 0.1% infected -- the prevalence of HIV in the entire U.S. population. For the general public, one-time screening would be most important, but testing every five years or every three years may also be justified for many groups. This HIV testing would have to be voluntary (meaning that individuals could refuse to be tested), or some people would avoid medical care for other conditions in order to avoid the test.

Both studies found that "the effects of screening would extend survival by 1.5 years for the average HIV-infected patient"³ by catching infection earlier when treatment could be more effective. One of the studies also estimated that "routine one-time screening would reduce the annual rate of transmission by slightly more than 20%"³ -- because many of the estimated 280,000 Americans who today do not know they have HIV would learn about taking precautions, and those who learn they are negative may be more motivated to make sure they stay that way.

This work was completed before the report on the possible HIV "super strain" in one patient in New York City. If a more dangerous virus is in fact spreading in the U.S. (which is not known as of February 2005), expanded testing could help to protect against it.

The editorial notes that new resources will need to be made available. By coincidence, the Early Treatment for HIV Act, recently introduced in Congress, would help people pay for treatment before they become disabled -- an important part of making expanded testing work (see the article on early Medicaid treatment in this issue).