The Risk of Developing AIDS in Hemophiliac and Homosexual Men-Reply

In Reply. —  To our knowledge, only one person in our hemophilic cohort was both hemophilic and homosexual; he has not developed AIDS. In addition to requesting this information, Dr Warth cites data suggesting that hemophilic men infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have lower rates of AIDS than do homosexual or bisexual men. For our two cohorts, we did not find a significant difference in the incidence of or latency period for AIDS, when year of infection was taken into account. He also raises the interesting question of whether receipt of HIV-contaminated blood products by persons with other additional sources of HIV exposure (eg, both hemophilic and homosexual or bisexual) might lead to the production of antibodies protective against the development of AIDS. Unfortunately, current data do not support either of Dr Warth's suggestions.Most studies have not found antibodies to be protective against HIV, perhaps in part because