CHICAGO, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Prison inmates infected with the AIDS virus often stop taking life-saving drugs after being released, raising health risks for them and their communities, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

The researchers said the U.S. prison system has become an important front in efforts to curb the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

But because most former inmates initially lack private or public health insurance, they often have trouble getting antiretroviral therapy that can keep the virus in check.

And that can give the virus a chance to become more infectious and increases the risk that it becomes more resistant to drugs, they said.

"Many inmates are offered HIV testing for the first time while incarcerated, and three-quarters of inmates with HIV infection initiate treatment during incarceration," Jacques Baillargeon of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Baillargeon and colleagues studied 2,115 HIV-infected inmates in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison system between January 2004 and December 2007 who were receiving HIV medications before release.

Among the entire group, only 5.4 percent filled a prescription within the first 10 days of their prison release, 17 percent during the first month and only 30 percent within the first two months of their release.

In all, nearly 90 percent of HIV-infected inmates had some interruption in their treatment, they said.

"These exceedingly high rates of treatment interruption suggest that most inmates face significant administrative, socioeconomic, or personal barriers to accessing antiretroviral therapy when they return to their communities," they said.

The authors urged greater coordination between state and local agencies, health care institutions and community-based organizations to help newly released prisoners keep their HIV infections in check.

HIV infects 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million.

(Editing by Will Dunham)

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