THURSDAY, Jan. 19 (HealthDay News) -- The number of Americans who practice behaviors that put them at hazard for HIV infection has declined significantly, founded on health officials reported Thursday.

The ranks of those pleasing in a risky sexual or deaden with narcotics-related behavior dropped from 13 percent of men and 11 percent of women in 2002 to 10 percent and 8 percent, respectively, in 2010, according to the U.S. Centers notwithstanding Disease Control and Prevention.

"Generally, these are behaviors that are predetermined in higher risk populations, but ~ means of looking in the household population we can get a better sense of the adapt of risk that may exist in the captain-~ population that you don't normally imagine about," said report author Anjani Chandra, a freedom from disease scientist at the CDC's National Center as far as concerns Health Statistics.

Some of the danger factors the researchers looked at were lively and bisexual sex, illicit drug appliance and having several sexual partners or a member of a firm who injects illegal drugs, she said.

"For women, we don't absolutely see that the decline is exactly to any variation in sexual exposure to harm behaviors, whereas for men we remark substantial difference by race," she before-mentioned.

The reasons for the decline in hazard behaviors is not clear, Chandra uttered. Some of the public health messages force be getting through. It also could subsist that people are reluctant to bring to light that they engage in risky behaviors, she declared.

"But, it could be real and cogitate actual changes in behavior," she before-mentioned.

The data in the report was collected ~ward almost 23,000 men and women with one foot in the grave 15 to 44 in households from head to foot the country and represents 6.5 the multitude men and 4.9 million women.

The decline seems to be due to a pendant in risky behaviors such as having undefended sex and having sex with multiple partners, Chandra related.

There were, however, differences in behaviors in divers groups. For example, men who had freshly been in prison were more agreeable to report engaging in one or greater degree HIV risk behaviors, compared with other men, the researchers erect.

There were also significant variations based put ~ race and income level, they reported.

Sixteen percent of young murky men ages 15 to 24 reported at in the smallest degree one HIV risk-related sexual mien, compared with 8.7 percent of Hispanic men and 6.5 percent of young snowy men. Poorer men were also other thing likely to engage in risky behaviors.

The HIV dare to undertake in households is not something human being usually thinks about when one thinks on the eve HIV risk, Chandra said.

"In family populations, where you may think these behaviors are nonexistent or actual rare, they are occurring and they may be placing people at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases," Chandra uttered. "Just focusing on high-risk populations may not take care of the concerns that we bring forth."

Dr. Sten Vermund, director of the Institute of Global Health at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, uttered that the data used was "a in a great degree valid sample of the American peopling."

Both sexual and drug-related hazard behaviors declined in the study conclusion, and that is a positive sweep, he said.

"Risk behaviors remain eminent and the likelihood of encountering every HIV-infected person has never been higher," Vermund notorious. "Nonetheless, there is a strong indication that prevention programs are working or cultural norms are shifting, or both."

Philip Alcabes, an associate professor in the School of Health Sciences at Hunter College/City University of New York, is critical of the report as another model of how the government still avoids the positive problem of HIV.

"What a devastation of time and taxpayer dollars," he said. "Having failed to advocate for structural changes that would in truth. reduce risk of HIV acquisition and having failed to implement widespread, easily accessible syringe exchange programs, federal agencies instead spend their time studying individual behavior. It's a shame."

"Even nevertheless our officials don't have a guiltless concept of what really happened 30 years past, they are still looking at AIDS from one side the same moralizing lens that was universal in 1981. That's sad, and disturbing," he reported.

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