Subject: German Researchers Issue Gloomiest AIDS Forecast
Date: Published: 12/2/86 34 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   German Researchers Issue
   Gloomiest AIDS Forecast
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   A Wall Street Journal News Roundup

   A West German team of scientists has projected that 75% of
people infected with the AIDS virus will progress to the
final and fatal stages of the disease within seven years.
   The forecast, the gloomiest to date, is more pessimistic
than the current U. S. public health consensus on acquired
immune deficiency syndrome.  According to the U. S. Centers for
Disease Control, of the 1.5 million Americans believed to be
infected, 20% to 30% will develop the active disease within
five years.  As of Nov. 24, there were 28,169 diagnosed cases
of AIDS in the U. S., of which 15,818 were fatal.
   The study by researchers at the University of Frankfurt,
reported in the Nov. 20 issue of the British journal Nature,
is based on 543 clinic patients observed since 1982.  The
subjects in the study were mostly sexual contacts of the
first AIDS patients to die in Frankfurt.
   The study is likely to generate both alarm and some
controversy because it attacks a popularly held belief that
only a minority of those exposed to the virus would develop
the disease.

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