A new US study has found that 11 per cent of American men have concurrent sexual partners, which is believed to contribute to the spread of HIV.

The study was carried out by researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and is published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Public Health.

The researchers set out to determine the proportion and distribution of men with concurrent sexual partners, which is believed to significantly influence the speed of the spread of HIV/AIDS.

According to ABC news, lead author, Dr. Adaora Adimora, clinical associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that:

“Concurrent partnerships are an important sexual network characteristic because of the way they connect people to each other.”

“These kinds of relationships can spread HIV through a population faster than the same number of monogamous relationships,” said Adimora.

Having overlapping sexual relationships contributes to what the researchers called the density of a person’s sexual network, which speeds up transmission in the overall population.

For instance, compare two scenarios: a man with HIV who has three concurrent sexual partners and a man with HIV who has three sexual partners one after another without them being concurrent. In the first scenario the man could pass the infection onto three people in the time the man in the second scenario has only passed it to one person.

Adimora and colleagues used data on 4,928 men taken from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From the dates of reported sexual partnerships they were able to work out the prevalence of concurrent sexual partnerships and relate it to demographic patterns linked to risk.

The results showed that 11 per cent of men had had concurrent sexual partners in the preceding 12 months, and compared to men who had not:

  • Concurrency was significantly linked to being unmarried (odds ratio 4.6), non-Hispanic black (odds ratio 2.6), or Hispanic (odds ratio 2.3).

  • Having spent a spell in prison during the preceding 12 months also increased the odds (odds ratio 2.1).

  • Men with concurrent sexual partners were more likely to report being intoxicated with drugs or alcohol during intercourse (odds ratio 2.1).

  • Men with concurrent sexual partners were also more likely to have had female sexual partners who were also in concurrent sexual relationships (odds ratio 6.1), and to have had sex with another man (odds ratio 1.9).

The researchers concluded that:

“The higher concurrency prevalence in various groups, dense sexual networks, and mixing between high-risk subpopulations and the general population may be important factors in the US epidemic of heterosexual HIV infection.”

“Concurrent Sexual Partnerships Among Men in the United States.”
Adaora A. Adimora, Victor J. Schoenbach, and Irene A. Doherty.
First Look, published online ahead of print Oct 30, 2007.
Am J Public Health 2007 0: AJPH.2006.099069.

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Written by: Catharine Paddock