NATION : 11 Female AIDS Cases Linked

BOSTON —  Eleven women, most of them well-educated and middle-class, caught the AIDS virus from the same man, demonstrating the potential hazards of sexual relations even for those at seemingly low risk of AIDS, researchers reported today.

Doctors said the cluster of infection, spotted in Belgium, is the largest to be documented among heterosexuals since the epidemic emerged almost a decade ago. But it is probably not unique.

Doctors who traced the spread said it should serve as a warning to women who believe that they can avoid the AIDS virus by limiting themselves to a few sexual partners.

“Emphasizing only sexual relations with multiple partners as a risk factor for women may be irrelevant and even counterproductive since it implies that the absence of multiple partners makes women ‘safe,’ ” the doctors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.