About half of 1 percent (0.47 percent) of the U.S. household population in the age group are living with HIV, according to estimates released Tuesday by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.
Based on surveys conducted between 1999-2006, the CDC found that 2 percent of non-Hispanic black adults were infected with HIV compared to 0.23 percent of white adults and 0.3 percent of Mexican-American adults.
Adults aged 18-49 who are infected with the herpes simplex type 2 virus (HSV-2) are more than 15 times likely to also be infected with HIV. An estimated 2 percent of HSV-2 positive adults also have HIV.
In 1999-2006, nearly a fourth of HIV-positive individuals but only 1 percent of the HIV-negative individual aged 18-49 years had low CD4 counts, an indicator of decreased immune function.
Approximately a third of HIV-positive persons had healthy immune systems as compared with 90 percent among the HIV negative.
