Anonymous Partnerships among MSM & Transgender Women (TW) Recently Diagnosed with HIV & Other STIs in Lima, Peru: An Individual-Level & Dyad-Level Analysis
OBJECTIVES:
Partner
notification (PN) following sexually transmitted disease (STI) diagnosis is a
key strategy for controlling HIV/STI transmission. Anonymous partnerships are
an important barrier to PN and often associated with high-risk sexual
behaviour. Limited research has examined the profile of men who have sex with
men (MSM) and transgender women (TW) who engage in anonymous sex. To better
understand anonymous partnership practices in Lima, Peru, we assessed
participant-level and partnership-level characteristics associated with
anonymous sex among a sample of MSM and TW recently diagnosed with HIV/STI.
METHODS:
MSM and
TW diagnosed with HIV/STI within the past month completed a cross-sectional
survey regarding anticipated PN practices. Participants reported sexual partnership
types and characteristics of up to three of their most recent partners. Using a
Poisson generalised estimating equation model, we assessed participant-level
and partnership-level characteristics associated with anonymous partnerships.
RESULTS:
Among 395
MSM and TW with HIV/STI, 36.0% reported at least one anonymous sexual partner
in the past 3 months (mean of 8.6 anonymous partners per participant; SD 17.0).
Of the 971 partnerships reported, 118 (12.2%) were anonymous and the majority
(84.8%) were with male partners, followed by 11.0% with female partners and
4.2% with transgender/travesti partners. Partner-level characteristics
associated with increased likelihood of having an anonymous partner included
female (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) 2.28, 95% CI 1.05 to 4.95, p=0.04) or
transgender/travesti (aPR 4.03, 95% CI 1.51 to 10.78, p=0.006) partner gender.
CONCLUSIONS:
By
assessing both individual-level and dyadic-level factors, these results
represent an important step in understanding the complexity of partnership
interactions and developing alternative PN strategies for Latin America.
- 1Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, New York, USA Department of Medicine and Program in Global Health, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, USA.
- 2Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA.
- 3Department of Medicine and Program in Global Health, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, USA.
- 4Asociación Civil Impacta Salud y Educación, Lima, Peru Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
- Sex Transm Infect. 2016 Feb 24. pii: sextrans-2015-052310. doi: 10.1136/sextrans-2015-052310.
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