Patients with AIDS-like symptoms but who test negative for HIV in six provincial regions on China's mainland may be suffering from AIDS phobia, Deng Haihua,spokesman of Ministry of Health said in response to reports in the Hong Kong media.

According to the Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily News, the mysterious virus could spread through saliva and blood. Cases begun to appear in Hong Kong, with similar cases in Taiwan and Singapore and now thousands of patients in Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hunan and Guangdong provinces had developed the "disease."

Patients with negative AIDS report swollen lymph glands, bleeding under the skin and small hairs growing on their tongue, said the paper, which also claimed that the disease was incurable and the virus a mystery to disease experts.

The patients reported symptoms similar to those of HIV carriers such as sweating and numbness on the hands and feet. But they repeatedly tested negative to HIV and medical checks didn't find any physical changes that would indicate disease.

Nanfang Daily interviewed many experts and reported yesterday that they had differing opinions of the phenomenon.

"It is not new in clinical practice and I have seen many such patients in Shanghai," said Dr Lu Hongzhou, vice president of Shanghai Public Health Center and a leading AIDS expert.

"These people suffer serious mental pressure while suspecting they have been infected with the HIV virus and compare their own symptoms with those of AIDS. However, they have received many tests and all negative. It is actually AIDS phobia," Lu said.

The Ministry of Health has required Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hunan and Guangdong to launch a study of the problem.

"We tested seven to eight samples in Guangdong and it wasn't HIV/AIDS," Lin Peng, director of AIDS Prevention and Control Institute under Guangdong Province Disease Control and Prevention Center told Nanfang Daily.

The ministry would be announcing the test results soon, Deng said.