Eleven Percent Of Men In The United States Have Had Concurrent Sexual Partners In The Past Year

Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Also Included In: HIV / AIDS;  Men's health
Article Date: 30 Oct 2007 - 16:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Concurrent partnerships, or partnerships that overlap in time, can contribute to the heterosexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

The study examined the prevalence of concurrent partnerships among men by analyzing data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. Out of 4,928 participants, 11 percent had concurrent sexual partnerships within the previous 12 months. Prevalence of concurrency varied substantially by ethnicity, with black men and Hispanic men twice as likely as white men to have had concurrent partnerships. Men with concurrency were less likely than were men without concurrency to have used a condom during last sexual intercourse. Concurrency was also associated with being unmarried, having been incarcerated during the previous year and earlier age of first sexual intercourse.

"The higher prevalence [of concurrency] in various groups and indications of dense sexual networks, mixing between high-risk subpopulations, and mixing between high-risk subpopulations and the general population may be important factors in the epidemiology of heterosexual HIV infection," the study's authors said. [From: "Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Among Men in the United States," Contact: Adaora A. Adimora, MD, MPH, University or North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, N.C., adimora@med.unc.edu .]

The American Journal of Public Health is the monthly journal of the American Public Health Association (APHA), the oldest organization of public health professionals in the world. APHA is a leading publisher of books and periodicals promoting sound scientific standards, action programs and public policy to enhance health.

American Journal of Public Health .

• Additional
• References
• Citations