Researchers have been undercounting new cases of HIV infection in the United States, meaning the rate is probably 25 percent higher at 50,000 people per year, the nation's top AIDS doctor said on Tuesday. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the rate of infection was not increasing but that new methods of calculating the rate showed infections were more common than previous estimates.
Fauci, attending the United Nations' 2008 High Level Meeting on AIDS, told reporters the previous methods had shown the rate of new infections in the United States had hit a plateau at around 40,000 per year for the past 14 years.
"They were counting the numbers in a way that was leaving out certain segments of the society. So that 40,000 was probably an undercounted number," he said.
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