One third of HIV positive gay men do not know they are infected

Main Category: HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 01 Jun 2004 - 10:00 PDT

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One third of gay men in the UK who are HIV positive do not know they are infected, according to new research. The study was carried out at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, UK. Saliva samples were gathered from 1,206 gay men. 10.9% of the men tested positive for HIV. Of those, one third did not know they had been infected.

You can read about the study in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

More worrying is that fact that many of the people who did not know they were infected said they were having unprotected sex.

About 50,000 people have been infected with the HIV virus in the UK, according to current estimates.

The researchers also interviewed 8,000 gay men from 1996-2000. They report an increase in risk-taking behaviour. In 1996 30% of the men had had unprotected sex during the previous year - in 2000 the figure jumped to 42%.

Many of the people in the study said they had never had an HIV test. Even among those who had had a test, there seemed to be a 4% margin of error in the results.

A spokesman for the research team said "A high proportion of HIV positive men continue to engage in high-risk sexual behaviour after diagnosis, emphasising the need for focused health promotion programmes to reduce the risk of HIV transmission to others."

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