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Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men
HIV ‘treatment as prevention’ (TasP) is highly effective in reducing HIV transmission in serodiscordant couples. There has been little examination of gay and bisexual men’s attitudes towards TasP, particularly regarding men’s willingness to act on beliefs about TasP. We conducted an online cross-sec...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4704706/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26741143 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145847 |
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author | Bavinton, Benjamin R. Holt, Martin Grulich, Andrew E. Brown, Graham Zablotska, Iryna B. Prestage, Garrett P. |
author_facet | Bavinton, Benjamin R. Holt, Martin Grulich, Andrew E. Brown, Graham Zablotska, Iryna B. Prestage, Garrett P. |
author_sort | Bavinton, Benjamin R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | HIV ‘treatment as prevention’ (TasP) is highly effective in reducing HIV transmission in serodiscordant couples. There has been little examination of gay and bisexual men’s attitudes towards TasP, particularly regarding men’s willingness to act on beliefs about TasP. We conducted an online cross-sectional survey of Australian men in late 2012 to investigate knowledge and beliefs about new developments in HIV prevention. Amongst 839 men (mean age 39.5 years), men tended to disagree that TasP was sufficiently effective to justify reduced condom use, although HIV-positive men had more favourable attitudes. Only a minority of men were aware of any evidence for TasP; and one-quarter incorrectly believed that evidence for the effectiveness of TasP already existed for the homosexual population. One-fifth (20.5%) of men reported that they would be willing to have condomless anal intercourse with an opposite-status sexual partner when the HIV-positive partner was taking HIV treatments. Factors independently associated with such willingness were: HIV-positive serostatus, reporting any serodiscordant or serononconcordant condomless anal intercourse with a regular male partner in the previous six months, reporting any condomless anal intercourse with a casual male partner in the previous six months, and having greater beliefs in the effectiveness of TasP. This indicated that the men most willing to rely on TasP to prevent transmission were already engaging in higher risk practices. Biomedical HIV prevention represents a rapidly changing environment with new research as well as community and policy responses emerging at a fast pace. For men with serodiscordant sexual partners to successfully apply TasP to reducing transmission risk, more support and education is needed to enable better utilisation of TasP in specific relational and sexual contexts. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4704706 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-47047062016-01-15 Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men Bavinton, Benjamin R. Holt, Martin Grulich, Andrew E. Brown, Graham Zablotska, Iryna B. Prestage, Garrett P. PLoS One Research Article HIV ‘treatment as prevention’ (TasP) is highly effective in reducing HIV transmission in serodiscordant couples. There has been little examination of gay and bisexual men’s attitudes towards TasP, particularly regarding men’s willingness to act on beliefs about TasP. We conducted an online cross-sectional survey of Australian men in late 2012 to investigate knowledge and beliefs about new developments in HIV prevention. Amongst 839 men (mean age 39.5 years), men tended to disagree that TasP was sufficiently effective to justify reduced condom use, although HIV-positive men had more favourable attitudes. Only a minority of men were aware of any evidence for TasP; and one-quarter incorrectly believed that evidence for the effectiveness of TasP already existed for the homosexual population. One-fifth (20.5%) of men reported that they would be willing to have condomless anal intercourse with an opposite-status sexual partner when the HIV-positive partner was taking HIV treatments. Factors independently associated with such willingness were: HIV-positive serostatus, reporting any serodiscordant or serononconcordant condomless anal intercourse with a regular male partner in the previous six months, reporting any condomless anal intercourse with a casual male partner in the previous six months, and having greater beliefs in the effectiveness of TasP. This indicated that the men most willing to rely on TasP to prevent transmission were already engaging in higher risk practices. Biomedical HIV prevention represents a rapidly changing environment with new research as well as community and policy responses emerging at a fast pace. For men with serodiscordant sexual partners to successfully apply TasP to reducing transmission risk, more support and education is needed to enable better utilisation of TasP in specific relational and sexual contexts. Public Library of Science 2016-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4704706/ /pubmed/26741143 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145847 Text en © 2016 Bavinton et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bavinton, Benjamin R. Holt, Martin Grulich, Andrew E. Brown, Graham Zablotska, Iryna B. Prestage, Garrett P. Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men |
title | Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men |
title_full | Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men |
title_fullStr | Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men |
title_full_unstemmed | Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men |
title_short | Willingness to Act upon Beliefs about ‘Treatment as Prevention’ among Australian Gay and Bisexual Men |
title_sort | willingness to act upon beliefs about ‘treatment as prevention’ among australian gay and bisexual men |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4704706/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26741143 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145847 |
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