Researchers are alarmed by a recent HIV outbreak among college students in North Carolina in which 53 male students - most of them black - have contracted the virus. For the first time in two decades of HIV research, the figures identify college campuses as high-transmission areas for HIV, according to University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and state researchers.
"This is the first indication that there may be a resurgence of HIV happening in a vulnerable population, in this case young black men in the South," said Christopher Pilcher, assistant professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill medical school and co-author of the report.
Researchers made the discovery after evaluating the results of new HIV tests that detect the infection within about two weeks after it occurs, rather than about three months as with traditional tests. County health departments and private clinics began to administer the new test in November.
Over three months, the new test found that five people in the Triangle area were HIV-infected - two of whom were black male college students. The report's authors declined to identify the school these students attended.
The authors then looked at confirmed HIV cases in Durham, Orange and Wake counties from January 2001 to February 2003. They discovered that 146 men and 88 women contracted HIV during this period. Among the men, 25 were students at public, private or community colleges, and 88 percent of those were black men who had sex with other men.
Researchers examined data from Guilford, Forsyth, Mecklenburg and Pitt counties, home of other large urban areas and places where some HIV patients reported having sex. Another 28 HIV cases were found among college students during that span of almost two years, and a disproportionate number of the infected students attend some of the state's historically black colleges and universities.
"We're really, really concerned because it's potentially just the tip of the iceberg," said Peter Leone, associate professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and medical director of the HIV prevention branch of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
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