Study documents dramatic rise in inner city AIDS. (Maryland)

Maryland

As the AIDS epidemic in the United States enters its second decade, the disease is afflicting a significantly larger number of inner-city women, teenagers and blacks than it did during the first decade, according to a study of patients visiting inner-city sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics in Baltimore.

"The data are pertinent to these inner-city STD patients and cannot be extrapolated to the general population," says Thomas C. Quinn, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and senior investigator at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. "Nevertheless, the high rate among teenagers, minorities and women who attend these clinics certainly reflects current …