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Steven J. Schleifer, MD; Steven E. Keller, PhD; Joseph M. Lombardo, MD, PhD; John E. Franklin, MD; Stephanie LaFarge, PhD; Sheldon I. Miller, MD
University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey New Jersey Medical School Newark

JAMA. 1989;262(19):2680-2681.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in substance abusers is a major public health concern, with intravenous (IV) drug users in urban centers such as New York, NY,¹ and Newark, NJ,^2,3 having an estimated prevalence of HIV seropositivity of 50% to 60%. Alcohol abusers, especially in inner-city areas, represent a large secondary at-risk population owing to geographic and social proximity to the primary high-risk groups, compounded by their being less likely than nonabusers to use safe-sex practices. The prevalence of antibody to HIV type 1 in alcoholics who deny the use of other substances has not, to our knowledge, been described.

We conducted an anonymous screening for HIV type 1 antibody on discarded samples from routine blood analyses of 99 patients in an inner-city alcohol treatment center. Sixty-eight percent of samples were from patients reporting alcohol use exclusively and 27% were from those with an additional . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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