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Half of HIV-positive gay men disagree that HIV treatment makes you less infectious
Gus Cairns, 2012-11-15 12:30:00
A survey of over 2000 gay men attending clinics in the UK has found that 48% disagree that HIV treatment can make someone less infectious or makes it unnecessary to use a condom, the eleventh International Congress on Drug Therapy in HIV Infection in Glasgow heard this week.
Although the ASTRA (Antiretrovirals, Sexual Transmission Risk and Attitudes) survey found that only 15% of men had recently had unprotected sex with someone of negative or unknown HIV status (serodiscordant unprotected anal intercourse or sdUAI), it discovered that that the minority of men who were not taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) were actually rather more, rather than less, likely to have unprotected sex with a partner of negative or unknown HIV status than men taking ART.
However, in gay men who were taking ART, those with a detectable viral load were considerably less likely to have sdUAI than men with an undetectable viral load, suggesting some men are taking their viral load into account when making decisions about unprotected sex.
The survey also found that beliefs about viral load and infectiousness did have an influence on safer-sex decisions, with men who did not believe that viral load reduces infectiousness being less than half as likely to have sdUAI as men who believed that it did.
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