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Abstract
As of June 30, 1991, 182,834 AIDS cases in the United States had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control, of which 58,879 (32.2%) were associated with illicit drug use. Of these, 39,904 (70.0%) were in both women and heterosexual men reported as injecting drug users (IDUs), 11,823 (20.7%) in men who have sex with men who are also IDUs, 5,305 (9.3%) in sex partners of IDUs, and 1,847 (3.1%) in children whose mothers were either IDUs or sex partners of IDUs. From 1989 to 1990, the increase in the number of United States AIDS cases associated with IDU either directly or indirectly was higher in all regions compared with the Northeast. The highest percentage increases were in the South, U.S. territories, and the North Central. From 1989 to 1990, the percentage of AIDS cases attributed directly to IDU increased in women and men (15.3 and 5.9%, respectively); however, the increase in sex partners of IDUs was much larger (34.5% in men and 29.1% in women). Increases were also higher in sex partners of IDUs than in IDUs when compared by race/ethnicity and by region of residence. Because HIV can spread rapidly among IDUs and their sex partners, there is an immediate need for targeting effective HIV prevention messages to all IDUs and their sex partners in communities with high HIV infection rates.