She noted that the gay community has done a good job of promoting the use of condoms, with older men teaching younger men about safe sex. That's missing in heterosexual relationships, where heterosexual men feel they're not in a risk category, she said. The risk is also there for monogamous women. People enter into monogamous relationships based on love and trust. But there are too many cases where, as one woman I know says, they may be married, but their husbands are not, Denison observed.

HIV Risk Factors
According to CDC, the most common ways HIV is transmitted are through sexual intercourse (vaginal, anal, or oral) with an HIV-infected person, by sharing needles or injection equipment with an HIV-infected injection drug user.

To babies from HIV-infected women before or during birth, or through breast-feeding. Anybody who is having unprotected sex should go get tested, Page recommended.

Worldwide, vaginal intercourse is the most common way HIV is transmitted. Scientists have explored whether women are more likely to get HIV than a man when directly exposed, but studies show that the risk for direct exposure is the same for males and females. Nevertheless, because women are generally more vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases than men they are also more vulnerable to HIV.

Access to Care and Treatment for HIV
Failure to get tested and failure to receive proper treatment after infection with HIV appear to be the primary reasons women with HIV develop AIDS and die more quickly after diagnosis than men do, says Phyllis Greenberger, Executive Director of the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research. She says this encourages the scientific community to look for gender differences in disease.

The presentation of viral load in women is lower, but the immune system for that level of viral load is more damaged, explained Margaret Fischl, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the AIDS Critical Research Program at the University of Miami School of Medicine. The reasons for this is unclear —it's unknown whether it's hormonal or not.

Because women are more likely to get full blown AIDS at a lower viral load than men, many haven';t been treated properly, Greenberger said. Women were not treated as early as they should have been because their diagnosis was made on the level of viral load and the symptoms that males had, and women had different symptoms that were not understood as the precursors of AIDS.