Tag Archives: safer sex

Why HIV Infections Are Still on the Rise

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A new approach to studying HIV transmission within a community has yielded a disturbing result, according to professor Zehava Grossman of Tel Aviv University’s School of Public Health and the Central Virology Laboratory of the Ministry of Health. By cross-referencing several databases and performing a molecular analysis of the virus found in patients, an astonishingly high number of newly diagnosed men with male sexual partners were found to have contracted the virus from infected, medicated partners who are already aware that they are HIV-positive.

Reported in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, these findings indicate that the public health approach towards HIV counseling and education needs to be reconsidered, Grossman says.

Since HIV infection rates began to rise again around 2000, researchers have been grasping for answers on what could be causing this change, especially in the gay community. The rising numbers are a stark contrast to the 1990s, when infection rates dropped due to increased awareness of the virus. This new study reveals that the number of new HIV cases diagnosed each year in the past decade saw a startling increase of almost 500% compared to the previous decade, and similar trends have been reported in a number of other developed nations, including the United States.

Researchers had begun to suspect that the rise in infection rates was due to a change in social behavior, but hard evidence was lacking. The answers, Grossman says, were not easy to find by asking the patients themselves. Questionnaires and similar methods to gather information are hard to interpret because, in addition to the difficulty of recruiting an accurate cross-section of the population, people are often unwilling to be frank about risky sexual behavior.

To unravel the mystery, Grossman and her colleagues at the Central Virology Laboratory directed by Ella Mendelson and Israel’s leading AIDS clinicians turned to the virus itself. Working with senior epidemiologists of the Public Health Services of Israel’s Ministry of Health, they conducted a comprehensive analysis of laboratory, clinical, and epidemiological data, including information about patients’ diagnosis and treatment, sexually transmitted diseases contracted along with HIV, and the molecular characteristics of the virus in different patients.

Grossman and her colleagues found that an overwhelming number of new cases were infected with HIV strains that had already developed resistance to existing anti-HIV drug therapies. Because the virus can only become resistant if previously exposed to medication, this result indicates that new patients are often infected by an HIV-positive partner already receiving the therapies. More often than in the past, HIV found in different patients could be traced back to a common source.

While people are now more knowledgeable about the virus and aware of the risks of unprotected sex, it appears that an increasing number of homosexual men, including those who are infected and treated for HIV, are likely to engage in risky sexual behavior. Public health authorities, educators, and activists should be encouraged to find new ways of changing this attitude and of better imprinting the message about the risk and consequences of HIV transmission, particularly within the gay community.

Clearly, Grossman warns, the need to establish the values of safer sex practices within at-risk populations is as imperative as it has ever been.

1 in 3 Meth Users Reports Sex With an HIV-infected Person

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A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere has shown that methamphetamine use can fuel HIV infection risk among young men who have sex with men, a group that includes openly gay and bisexual men as well as those who have sex with men but do not identify themselves as gay or bisexual.

The researchers said that nearly one-third participants who reported recent meth use also reported sex with an HIV-infected person, while half reported sex with an injection-drug user. More than half said they have had unprotected sex.

While previous research has linked risky sexual behaviors to drug use in MSM, the new study is the first multicity analysis to also include teenagers, a group made especially vulnerable by lack of experience, the investigators say.

The team’s findings, published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, underscore the need for HIV prevention programs to factor in the role of substance abuse. “Drug use is closely linked to risk-taking behaviors, including sexually risky behaviors, so any HIV prevention efforts must, by definition, include drug use prevention and treatment of those with known drug problems,” says Jonathan Ellen, MD, an adolescent health specialist at Johns Hopkins.

Methamphetamine — a popular and relatively cheap street drug — heightens sexual response and lowers inhibitions, the researchers note. “Add meth and you have a formula that leads to increased sexual risk in a group that already has higher prevalence of HIV,” says study investigator Nancy Willard, MS, also a researcher at Johns Hopkins.

The researchers caution that any drug abuse — not just methamphetamine — can push up the rates of risky behavior. Indeed, participants who reported having used other hard drugs, such as cocaine, crack, heroin, and ecstasy, were more likely than nondrug users to have sex with HIV-infected partners (24% versus11%) and more likely to have sex with injection-drug users (20% versus 10%).

Masturbate More and Have Safer Sex?

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Eighty-six percent of teen guys who reported wearing a condom during their last sexual encounter said they masturbated during the past year, as opposed to only 44% of guys who did not masturbate, according to a new study.

The study — which surveyed 820 youths ages 14 to 17 to assess masturbation prevalence, frequency, and association with partnered sexual behaviors — notes that young guys who masturbate reported being more sexually active. When age and partner status were factored in, sexually active boys who masturbated were approximately eight times as likely to have used a condom during their last sexual experience.

Although a correlation between masturbation and condom use is not definitive, “the association of any behavior with increased condom use deserves further investigation, given the rates of [STDs] in adolescents,” asserts the report.

The researchers concluded masturbation is an important component of sexuality, yet they observed that discussing it remains taboo in the United States, even for many doctors.

“Health care providers should recognize that many teens masturbate and discuss masturbation with patients because masturbation is integral to normal sexual development,” the authors say. Trojan condom manufacturer Church & Dwight Co. supported the research, which was published as “Prevalence, Frequency, and Associations of Masturbation with Partnered Sexual Behaviors Among U.S. Adolescents” in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.