This Chart Shows Why HIV Is Still Spreading in the U.S.
Patients diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS but not getting care account for most new transmissions, estimates show
HIV-1 budding (in green) from a cultured lymphocyte.
Source: CDCThis article is for subscribers only.
Each year in the U.S., about 50,000 people contract HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That rate hasn't changed much in the last decade, even though anti-retroviral therapy can effectively control the virus and dramatically lower the risk that people with HIV will transmit it.
If you want to understand why HIV continues to spread in the U.S., take a look at the chart below. It's based on new estimates, published today in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, of what stage of care people with HIV are in when they're most likely to transmit the virus to others.