Study Confirms HIV Viral Load Lower In Women Than Men; Implications For Therapy.

2001 MAR 22- (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A 10-year study of injection drug

users infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has conclusively confirmed that women have lower viral load (the number of HIV particles present in blood) than men, particularly in the first few years after infection.

HIV infected women, however, progress to AIDS at the same rate as men.

These results clarify how candidates for antiretroviral therapy should be chosen, say researchers with the Johns Hopkins Schools of Public Health and Medicine. Their report appeared in the March 8, 2001, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the study median viral loads were initially more than three times lower in women than in men, but women went on to develop AIDS at the same rate as men.

Twenty-nine men and 15 women in the study progressed to AIDS. Among the 29 men who progressed to AIDS, the median initial viral load was 77,822 copies per milliliter (ml) of blood, compared to 40,634 copies/ml among the 127 men who did not progress to AIDS. Among women, the corresponding figures were 17,149 copies/ml and 12,043 copies/mi, respectively. The risk of AIDS was comparable for women and men, that is, no statistically significant sex difference was detected in the rate of disease progression. Viral loads continued to be lower in women than men for several years after HIV-1 seroconversion.

Lead author Timothy R. Sterling, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, explained, 'This sex difference in initial viral load means that the same viral load measurement does not convey the same risk of AIDS in women and men. For example, in this study an initial viral load of 17,149 copies/ml was associated with progression to AIDS in women but not in men. In men, a viral load as high as 40,634 copies/ml was not associated with progression to AIDS."