You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Behaviour
Seroadaptive behaviours among men who have sex with men in San Francisco: the situation in 2008
  1. Jonathan M Snowden1,
  2. H Fisher Raymond2,
  3. Willi McFarland3
  1. 1School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
  2. 2San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco, California, USA
  3. 3San Francisco Department of Public Health and University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Willi McFarland, AIDS Office, 25 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102-6033, USA; willi_mcfarland{at}hotmail.com

Abstract

Objectives To assess changes in seroadaptive behaviours among men who have sex with men (MSM) in San Francisco over the past 4 years.

Methods 461 MSM were recruited in 2008 as the second wave of the US National HIV Behavioural Surveillance (NHBS) survey in San Francisco. Participants were classified into patterns of seroadaptive behaviours based on reported sexual practices (ie, episodes of insertive and receptive anal sex), condom use, HIV serostatus and partners' serostatus for up to five partners in the preceding 6 months. The prevalence of seroadaptive behaviours was compared with the first wave of NHBS, which used identical methods in 2004.

Results In 2008, 33.7% of HIV-negative and 18.9% of HIV-positive MSM used condoms 100% of the time; nearly half (48.0%) of HIV-negative MSM and two-thirds (66.7%) of HIV-positive MSM had unprotected anal intercourse (UAI). Collectively, seroadaptive behaviours comprised the most common form of risk management; 40.5% of HIV-negative MSM and 51.1% of HIV-positive MSM engaged in some form of seroadaptation, the most common being ‘pure serosorting’ (all UAI with same serostatus partners) reported by 27.5% of HIV-negative MSM and 22.2% of HIV-positive MSM. None of these behaviours were significantly different from their corresponding measures in 2004.

Conclusions Seroadaptation continues to describe the prevailing form of sexual risk management for MSM in San Francisco, suggesting that these behaviours are not novel and require careful measurement to gauge the true potential for the spread of HIV, and nuanced prevention messages to reduce risk.

  • Seroadaptation
  • serosorting
  • HIV
  • men who have sex with men
  • epidemiology
  • gay men
  • HIV
  • sexual behaviour
  • surveillance

https://doi.org/10.1136/sti.2010.042986

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Funding Funding was provided by the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, CDC (U62/PS000961). The CDC had no other role in the creation of this paper and the views expressed herein are those of the authors alone. Other Funders: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethics approval This study was conducted with the approval of the Committee on Human Research, University of California, San Francisco.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.