THE RISING PREVALENCE OF HIV-1 INFECTION IN PATIENTS ATTENDING AN INNER-CITY ACCIDENT AND EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT

The recently published findings of the unlinked anonymous HIV prevalen ce study in England and Wales showed unchanging HIV prevalence in grou ps such as home/bisexual men, and declining rates in non-injecting het erosexual men attending genitourinary medicine clinics.' However, this multicentre study did detect a significant rise in seroprevalence rat es in pregnant women in England and Wales and sentinel groups within h ospitals in London, warning that changing patterns of HIV infection mi ght account for these variable results. In 1992-1993 a seroprevalence study of adult patients attending the accident and emergency departmen t at St. Mary's Hospital in West Central London showed a rate of HIV-1 infection of 1 in 77.(2) We have repeated the seroprevalence study ov er the same calendar months in 1994-1995 to gain further information a bout HIV positive patients attending the department and to see whether a change in the patterns of HIV infection in the population served by St Mary's Hospital had occurred.