A randomized trial of an education and support program for HIV-infected individuals.

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of an intervention for providing information and support to HIV-positive donors on changes in their sexual behavior, and to assess which donor characteristics are predictive of behavior change.

Design: Subjects were randomly assigned to a structured intervention or community referral group. Follow-up assessments were conducted every 6 months.

Depressive symptoms in blood donors notified of HIV infection.

Objectives: Understanding more about the psychological state of persons notified of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is critical for designing notification and counseling programs that will have the most positive effect.

Methods: The subjects were blood donors who had been notified of HIV infection by the New York Blood Center. A nurse elicited a medical history, performed a limited medical examination, and asked the subjects to complete a questionnaire that included questions about drug use, sexual behavior, and psychological characteristics.

Behavior changes after notification of HIV infection.

Background: To learn more about how people who did not volunteer for testing react to information about HIV infection, we assessed short-term behavior changes in HIV-positive blood donors.

Methods: Blood donors who were notified at the New York Blood Center that they were HIV positive were asked to participate in a study. A nurse elicited a medical history, performed a limited medical examination, and asked participants to complete a questionnaire that included questions about drug use, sexual behavior, and psychological characteristics.

Trends in sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics of HIV antibody-positive blood donors.

This paper describes the sociodemographic characteristics of people who donated blood to the New York Blood Center between April 1985 and February 1988 and tested positive for antibodies to HIV. Information on HIV-related risk factors and knowledge of blood screening is presented for seropositive donors who participated in an evaluation study. The most commonly reported risk factor among men was sexual contact with another man, and many of the male seropositive donors reported sex with an intravenous (IV) drug user or use of IV drugs.

Human T-cell lymphotropic virus in volunteer blood donors.

Serum samples collected in 1985 and 1986 from 18,257 donors to the Greater New York Blood Program were screened by enzyme-linked immunoassay for antibody to human T-cell lymphotropic virus (anti-HTLV). Fifteen samples (0.08%) were confirmed positive: 7 by radioimmunoprecipitation assay (RIPA) alone, 6 by Western blot alone, and 2 by combined results from both tests.