RUILI, China -- This ancient road has had many names: Old tea-horse trail. The Burma Road. Route 320. But the label that matters most today is one that appears on no sign at all: the AIDS road.

Past truck-stop brothels and through disease-ravaged cities and villages in China's far southwest Yunnan province, this two-lane road carves the path of an HIV epidemic that is growing faster than international health officials previously thought.

This is the main road through the epicenter of AIDS in the world's most populous country, where a new national study shows that 200 people are being infected every day. It is a central artery through which sex, drugs and trade are spreading the virus into previously untouched swaths of the population, researchers say.

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