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The prevalence of AIDS among prisoners in the United States is five times that of the general population, and the rates for some other sexually transmitted disease are even higher, scientists said Tuesday. Reporting on the first comprehensive study of these diseases in prisons and jails, the lead author, Dr. Theodore Hammett, said the high prevalence of AIDS among prisoners reflects their widespread use of drugs before they were imprisoned. He presented the findings Tuesday at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta. Prisons are a critical setting for detecting and treating sexually transmitted diseases, Hammett said, but the quality of health care varies widely. About 90 percent of the prisons and jails say they make the newer combinations of anti-HIV drugs available, but not necessarily to all inmates, Hammett said

Reporting on the first comprehensive study of these diseases in prisons and jails, the study's lead author, Dr. Theodore Hammett, said the high prevalence of AIDS among prisoners reflected their widespread use of drugs before they were imprisoned. He presented the findings yesterday at the National H.I.V. Prevention Conference in Atlanta. Prisons are a critical setting for detecting and treating sexually transmitted diseases, Dr. Hammett said, but the quality of health care varies widely. About 90 percent of the prisons and jails say they make the newer combinations of anti-H.I.V. drugs available, but not necessarily to all inmates, Dr. Hammett said. In 1997, an estimated 8,900 inmates had AIDS, and 35,000 to 47,000 more were infected with H.I.V., said Dr. Hammett, who works for Abt Associates, a private research and consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. Dr. Hammett conducted the study for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, a private organization in Chicago that aims to improve health care in jails and prisons

Reporting on the first comprehensive study of these diseases in prisons and jails, the lead author, Dr. Theodore Hammett, said the high prevalence of AIDS among prisoners reflects their widespread use of drugs before they were imprisoned. He presented the findings yesterday at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta. Prisons are a critical setting for detecting and treating sexually transmitted diseases, Hammett said, but the quality of health care varies widely. About 90 percent of the prisons and jails say they make the newer combinations of anti-HIV drugs available, but not necessarily to all inmates, Hammett said. The high rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are particularly alarming, participants said, because they are adding fuel to the continuing epidemic of HIV, the AIDS virus. Syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia cause inflammation and sores that allow more HIV to concentrate in genital secretions and thus greatly increase the risk of acquiring and transmitting HIV

Reporting on the first comprehensive study of these diseases in prisons and jails, the lead author, Dr. Theodore Hammett, said the high prevalence of AIDS among prisoners reflects their widespread use of drugs before they were imprisoned. He presented the findings Tuesday at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta. Prisons are a critical setting for detecting and treating sexually transmitted diseases, Hammett said, but the quality of health care varies widely. About 90 percent of the prisons and jails say they make the newer combinations of anti-HIV drugs available, but not necessarily to all inmates, Hammett said

Death rates from AIDS in the United States slowed again in 1998. But the rates are no longer falling as rapidly as they did from 1995 to 1997, after the introduction of combination drug therapy, health officials said Monday. And the rate of infection with HIV, the AIDS virus, is no longer declining and has stabilized, the officials said. About 40,000 Americans have been infected annually in recent years. Although these rates are much lower than they were at their peak in the 1980s, the slowing rate of decline shows that more aggressive prevention efforts are needed, officials said. At the same time, a new method of testing blood has been providing hitherto unavailable information about trends in new infections and fresh ways to detect hot spots of infections -- steps that are expected to help focus prevention efforts on groups in which the virus is being transmitted most rapidly. The incidence of new infections with HIV was 'dangerously high' in some areas among young gay men and heterosexual women, particularly blacks and members of other minorities, participants at a conference in Atlanta said

Death rates from AIDS in the United States slowed again in 1998. But the rates are no longer falling as rapidly as they did from 1995 to 1997, after the introduction of combination drug therapy, health officials said Monday at a meeting in Atlanta. And the rate of infection with HIV, the AIDS virus, is no longer declining and has stabilized, the officials said. About 40,000 Americans have been infected annually in recent years. Although these rates are much lower than they were at their peak in the 1980s, the slowing rate of decline shows that more aggressive prevention efforts are needed, officials said. At the same time, a new method of testing blood has been providing hitherto unavailable information about trends in new infections and fresh ways to detect hot spots of infections - steps that are expected to help focus prevention efforts on groups in which the virus is being transmitted most rapidly

Leading journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association and Nature have long been criticized for withholding information about their articles until publication. These embargoes, critics say, serve mainly to protect the journals' position in the marketplace. The journals respond that their efforts in evaluating and editing manuscripts justify the delays. Few would say that articles in leading journals are distorted or unreliable, but the quest for profits raises several disturbing issues: the journals' increasing appetite for publicity; how a burst of publicity from an article can inflate the importance of a new finding; the drug industry's influence on journals through advertising revenues, and the reluctance of journals to account publicly for their profits and how they are spent. Last month, Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, the top editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, resigned under pressure in a dispute with its owner, the Massachusetts Medical Society. In January, the American Medical Association dismissed the top editor of its journal, Dr. George D. Lundberg, for publishing a survey during the Clinton impeachment hearings on attitudes about sex

'Dead bodies do not create diseases among survivors,' Michel Thieren, a medical officer in the World Health Organization's department of emergency and humanitarian action, said in an interview. 'Natural disasters do not import diseases that are not already present in the affected area.'

''Dead bodies do not create diseases among survivors,'' Dr. Michel Thieren, a medical officer in the World Health Organization's department of emergency and humanitarian action, said in a telephone interview. ''Natural disasters do not import diseases that are not already present in the affected area.'' W.H.O., a unit of the United Nations, is speaking out to correct misinformation about the health hazards of disasters ''because myths are about to create panic in the field and divert the resources and the assistance from those who really need them,'' Dr. Thieren said. But Dr. Thieren's comments disputing this were echoed by other health officials, who said Turkey's greatest public health needs were to monitor the incidence of infectious diseases and restore basic water and sanitation services

Doctors in Boston reported yesterday that a bone-marrow transplant had enabled a kidney transplant patient to survive without antirejection drugs and that nearly a year later, she was showing no sign of rejection. The circumstances of the operation were unusual: the patient had a form of cancer, multiple myeloma, that led to kidney failure as a complication, and doctors said they felt the only possible treatment was a double transplant. But they also hoped the transplants would induce a state of immune tolerance in the patient, a condition known as mixed chimerism. The new procedure has limited use, said Dr. Thomas Spitzer, a transplant researcher at Massachusetts General and a participant in the procedure. In this case, the donor was the patient's sister, increasing the chance of success because of their biological closeness. The doctors also said they used a new, less toxic type of bone marrow transplant, which allows the recipient to preserve most of her own marrow. This led, the doctors said, to the blended immune system that characterizes mixed chimerism