William Hooke
Clinical posts from members and guests of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) from various international medical and scientific conferences on HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexual health.
Do repeat STI infections increase HIV risk?
This morning I attended the Oral presentations for HIV/STI testing and management, looking at different studies around HIV risk.
Brendan Harney from Melbourne presented his study: Risk of HIV following repeat sexually transmissible infections among men who have sex with men in Victoria, Australia.
This presentation was a retrospective study questioning, if MSM have repeat positive STI diagnoses, are they at an increased risk of HIV transmission?
Out of 8941 MSM (median age 29, Australian born) surveyed at a busy Melbourne Sexual Health Centres, 2.5% were diagnosed as HIV positive.
Although repeat Chlamydia and Syphilis notifications were common, Rectal gonorrhoea was found to be the highest, with 13.5% of those with a repeat positive gonorrhoea rectal infection becoming HIV positive.
Conclusion? Repeat Gonorrhoea infections are strongly associated with a HIV infection, and that this data is key to looking at PrEP inclusion criteria and why we target specific groups and behavioural activities for PrEP enrolment studies.