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The number of gay and bisexual men diagnosed with HIV climbed for the third consecutive year in some states in the United States in 2002, raising fears that the disease might be poised for a major comeback in this high-risk group, officials said on Monday.

HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men surged 7.1 percent last year, with an overall increase of almost 18% since 1999, according to the new figures collected by the CDC from 25 states that are participating in a longstanding HIV-infection reporting network, according to a Reuters report.

In 1999, the number of infections among gay and bisexual men bottomed out at 6,561 of the 40,000 total HIV infections estimated annually, Harold Jaffe of the CDC told the center's National Conference on HIV Prevention held in Atlanta.

The AIDS epidemic in the United States is far from over. When you add it all up, it does seem to paint a consistent picture. The epidemic may be on the rise among gay men." Said Jaffe.

He cautioned, however, that the jump in HIV diagnoses could have been caused by increases in the number of gay and bisexual males being tested for the virus and was not proof that this group was being infected at a faster rate.

Health officials have however warned that the picture is incomplete because some states with the heaviest burden of HIV including California and New York have only recently began reporting HIV diagnoses and reliable data on trends won't be available for another year or two.
According to two new studies presented the conference, researchers have found that a growing number of gay and bisexual men in the US are engaging in risky sex with partners they meet on the Internet and online chatrooms and Web sites are replacing gay bathhouses and sex clubs as the most popular meeting point to arrange high-risk sex.

Researchers noted that men who met partners online, in bathhouses or at sex clubs tended to have more sexual encounters than those who did not.

The findings come amid growing evidence of an apparent resurgence of HIV as well as syphilis in men who have sex with men. It is believed that the presence of sexually transmitted diseases is known to facilitate the spread of HIV.

"It's clear we need to reach gay and bisexual men with appropriate messages, not only in traditional high-risk settings but also online," said Dr. Ron Valdiserri, deputy director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention.

In one survey by the California Department of Health Services, 23 percent of gay and bisexual men infected with syphilis admitted meeting sexual partners on the Internet, compared to 21 percent who had done so in bathhouses.

A separate study by the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California in San Francisco found that 39 percent of bisexual and gay men surveyed online admitted having unprotected anal sex with someone they had met on the Internet in the previous two months. Eleven percent of these respondents were HIV-positive.