A recent study (Kalichman & Allen (K&A)) involving a series of four cross-sectional surveys (1996-2016) at a Gay Pride event in US Atlanta Georgia adds to the mounting body of evidence that substantial changes have occurred in community-held beliefs about the safety of certain sexual behaviours in the era of HIV treatment as prevention. It […]
Category: Behaviour
Is increasing gonorrhoea resistance in MSM is a result of more treatment, rather than greater sexual activity?
Emerging antibiotic resistance to the last-ditch treatment of Neisseria gonorrhoeae compels health policy-makers to balance opposing concerns. On the one hand, successfully combating spread of the infection requires targeted treatment of core-group individuals. On the other, a focus on the core-group causes a rebound in core-group incidence, with maximal dissemination of resistance (Chan & McCabe/STIs (C&M); […]
Inadequacy of ‘treatment as prevention’ strategy for combating HIV in young US MSM
The secret of containing the HIV epidemic is the successful engagement of key populations, we are told. In the case of the US that evidently includes young MSM (YMSM), amongst others. The scale of the task that confronts public health interventions aimed at prevention in this group is brought out in a recent study by Wilson & Hightow-Weidmann […]
Where next for HIV prevention in New Zealand?
A recent issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) (128: vol. 1426) gives pride of place to a series of papers that reconsider the way forward for HIV prevention in New Zealand (NZ) against the background of the past thirty years. Recent contributions to STI journal by these authors analyse the behavioural surveillance data […]
PrEP highly effective against HIV in MSM and has limited impact on risk compensation
The year 2015 is likely to turn out a decisive one for the story of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV). After a slow and faltering beginning, with trials in sub-Saharan Africa dogged by problems of poor adherence (Haberer & Bangsburg/STI/blog; VOICE D/STI/blog; Hendrix & Bumpus/STI/blog), this intervention appears at last to have proved its worth […]
Living dangerously in the Dominican Republic and Mexico City: can cash transfer payments be used to counteract the “risk premium”?
The Caribbean has the highest levels of HIV outside sub-Saharan Africa – and the Dominican Republic (DR), which together with Haiti accounts for 70% of all people living with HIV in the Caribbean region, is a hotspot. While there has been a 73% reduction in the rate of new infections in the DR between 2001 […]
Should bisexuals be considered a population with specific sexual health needs?
Across many cultural contexts, men who have sex with both men and women (MSMW) have levels of STIs/HIV comparable to those we find in men who have sex only with men (MSM); but MSMW have often proved particularly hard for health services to access. Mercer & Cassell (M&C) (UK) and STIs/Beyrer & Baral (B&B) (South Africa) […]
Shared needles for Viagra injection fuel STIs among the Korean elderly
UK BBC radio’s 4’s Korean correspondent, Lucy Williamson refers in last Tuesday’s Crossing Continents to a category of STI transmission through IVDU, which is unlikely to be familiar to our readers. A recent article in the Korea Times gives further details. The individuals at risk are the 16% of South Korean seniors (65+) in Seoul […]
Partners PrEP sub-study finds no evidence that PrEP use is associated with risk compensation behaviour
How useful is pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)? The Partners PrEP randomized control study of daily pre-exposure prophylaxis among HIV-uninfected partners of heterosexual HIV-discordant couples in Uganda and Kenya has indicated that, given adequate adherence, PrEP has high biologic efficacy. The study itself (Baeten & Celum) demonstrates levels of risk reduction of 75%; while a spin-off sub-study […]
Are bisexuals well served by HIV interventions that assume gay identity?
Studies published in STI journal have examined the impact of bisexual concurrency on HIV epidemiology in South Africa (Behrer & Baral) (B&B) and China (Yun & Shang) (Y&S), where it is reckoned at 53.7% and 31.2% of the MSM population, respectively. However, a recent randomized control study of an educational intervention in Los Angeles (Harawa […]