The CDC released a report the other day about HIV infection among men who have sex with men (MSM). It covered the period 2001 to 2006 and used data from 33 states. Here’s the graph showing the trends among guys ages 13-24…

There are a number of things that are striking about the report…

First is the obvious trend with young black guys 13-24 shown in the graph above. That graph is of actual diagnoses, so think about what it means for that many black “kids” to be getting infected. Blacks are approximately 12% of the population nationwide, but they were 56% of the guys getting infected with HIV between 2001 and 2006 – in 2006 that went up to 59%. To be fair the 12% is the national average and the infection data is for 33 states, but still… Every year the rate of infection for young black guys goes up about 15%.

Next is the trend that’s sort of gets lost in the graph – and that is the rate of increase for young Asian guys 13-24 – it’s going up about 31% a year. Because of small sample size with Asians the number could actually be anywhere from 12% to 53% (95% confidence) – but that’s a huge shift… It used to be that Asian guys were always pretty conservative sexually, but that’s changing quickly and young Asian guys are having more and more risky sex.

Other trends in the full report were that the rate of infection is actually going down for some groups – It’s going down about 4% a year for guys in New York and New Jersey. It’s going down about 1% a year for guys ages 25-44 but that group comprises 64% of the new HIV infections. And the geographic regions with the highest rates of increase are the West and Midwest – about 7% a year increase…

So all in all there’s nothing really surprising in this report. Infection rates are down for older guys and up for younger guys, which we’ve seen reported before.

And the explanation is pretty simple. Young guys don’t have a memory of what it was like back when HIV was a death sentence. Their actions reflect what they see – that AIDS deaths are at an all-time low.

The other thing to remember is that the report can be affected by local pushes to increase HIV testing. For example I expect to see a spike in rates for Blacks and Hispanics because NYC is doing a big push to get everyone living in the Bronx tested for HIV (that one Borough accounts for 1/3rd of the AIDS deaths in the NYC even though it’s just 19% of the population).

However local pushes only have so much influence on the numbers. We’re still seeing a remarkable increase in infections among young Blacks and Asians. Even for young Hispanics who have the lowest increase for people in their age cohort – it’s still going up 8% a year.

Now compare that to the fact that young guys are more likely to use condoms (at least in NYC). That’s one statistic I think will be changing as more and more of them are apparently learning to enjoy barebacking…