CALY----Possible media coverage play over the weekend ala GERN etc
Rockhill
Urine Test Shows Hidden HIV Infection
By Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One out of every 1,000 Americans could be walking around infected with HIV without even knowing it, having passed blood tests, researchers said
Thursday.
A new urine test has detected signs of the AIDS virus in the urine of two dozen people who showed no signs of infection in their blood.
Now the researchers are working to find out if these people risk getting AIDS and can infect others, or if their bodies have successfully fought off infection.
Studies have shown similar findings in groups of people considered at high risk of HIV infection, such as sexually active gay men, but this is the first study to find the urine
readings in low-risk people.
Dr. Robert Stout, president of Clinical Reference Laboratory (CRL), which did the study, said more than twice as many people tested had signs of virus in their urine as showed it
in their blood.
''One in a thousand could be walking around and not knowing it -- that's the scary part of it,'' Stout said in a telephone interview.
He said policies on who gets tested, and how, will have to change. ''We are going to be testing serum (blood) and urine samples of everyone. I mean literally everyone,'' he said.
''What we are looking at here is challenging the whole idea of HIV infection,'' he added. ''Since we have been studying the blood of people for 15 years, do we really know the full
extent of the infection?''
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