Sexual health

Sexual health features

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  PrEP wars: debating pre-exposure prophylaxis in the gay community

  Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was approved in the US in July, following trials showing its efficacy in preventing sexual transmission of HIV. But, as Gus Cairns finds out, it...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Treatment as prevention: Experts in the UK agree it works

  Roger Pebody summarises the statement released in January that should now guide how our doctors talk to us about treatment as prevention. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  "How are we going to have a baby? I’m positive and you’re not"

  Joanna Moss of the African Health Policy Network (AHPN) looks at conception and fertility guidelines and services for people living with HIV in the UK. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  The gay globe

  In the last two years, three internet surveys in Europe, the USA and Asia asked over 200,000 gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM)...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Getting tough on criminalisation

  “Nothing short of barbaric.” This was the comment of a BBC presenter, confronted with the number and sheer arbitrary injustice of criminal convictions of people accused of transmitting...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Saving face: GMFA's sexual health messaging service

  Gay men’s health charity, GMFA, is launching a new service to make telling sexual partners about STIs less daunting. Gus Cairns investigates. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Treatment as prevention works!

  A large randomised study of treatment as prevention has closed more than three years early after interim analysis of the data showed that antiretroviral treatment reduced the...

  From:  HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Safer sex in the treatment era

  There is mounting evidence that reducing viral load through HIV treatment may be one of the most effective ways of stopping onward transmission of HIV. But how...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Do HIV drugs really mean you aren’t infectious?

  Gus Cairns looks at new research on this controversial subject. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Love is a danger

  American researchers have reported that gay men in the US are more likely to contract HIV from their main sexual partner than from casual sex.  What are the...

  From:  HIV treatment update

Sexual health in your own words

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  Anger - I was furious

  I wasn’t really surprised when I found out I had HIV, after all I went to have an HIV test because I had all the...

  From: In your own words

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  A problem below stairs...

  I’ve had warts since I was a child – they run in my family. At one point, around the age of 12, I had small...

  From: In your own words

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  My hero!

  Sex. It’s messy, fraught with all sorts of psychological problems and yes, it’s obviously what got me into this whole predicament in the first place....

  From: In your own words

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  Bored and horny

  It’s Sunday afternoon and it’s raining. I’m bored and horny. However, I’ve got £20 left over from the night before and this will be enough...

  From: In your own words

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  Preventing mother-to-child transmission

  I found out about my HIV status when I was 16 weeks pregnant. After I had an HIV test, I had counselling with the midwife....

  From: In your own words

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  Grateful? I don't think so

  “You must be so grateful that your partner agreed to stay with you despite the fact that you have, you know, AIDS,” said a particularly...

  From: In your own words

Sexual health news from aidsmap

• PrEP services could enhance STI control, says World Health Organization

  The roll-out of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) provides an opportunity to bring down the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), provided that PrEP and STI programmes are better co-ordinated and integrated, representatives from the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday ...

  22 July 2019 | Roger Pebody

• What’s the relationship between PrEP, condom use and STIs?

  HIV experts and professionals agree that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a valuable addition to HIV prevention, but have varied views of the relationship between PrEP, reduced condom use and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), according to a study published last month ...

  17 July 2019 | Roger Pebody

• Rectal douching by MSM associated with increased odds of infection with HIV and STIs

  Rectal douching may put men who have sex with men (MSM) at increased risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), according to research published in Sexually Transmitted Infections. Synthesising the results of 24 separate studies, investigators showed ...

  28 May 2019 | Michael Carter

• The throat is a major source of gonorrhoea infections in MSM

  The throat is a major source of gonorrhoea transmission among men who have sex with men (MSM), according to Australian research published in Sexually Transmitted Infections. The study involved 60 male couples and showed a high prevalence of gonorrhoea ...

  21 May 2019 | Michael Carter

• Multi-drug resistant Shigella detected in the UK and USA, mostly in gay men

  Public health authorities in the UK have issued a warning about a highly drug-resistant strain of a serious bacterial gut infection that can be contracted through sex. Between March and November last year, 17 cases of Shigella dysentery with resistance to ...

  22 January 2019 | Michael Carter

• Meta-analysis finds high but variable STI rates in PrEP studies – is PrEP the cause or a potential solution?

  A new meta-analysis of 20 studies and roll-out projects of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in gay and bisexual men confirms very high rates of diagnosis of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in study participants and PrEP takers. Dr Ricardo Werner ...

  11 January 2019 | Gus Cairns

• Public Health England warns that improved treatment and testing rates for STIs in the UK could be imperilled by cuts

  A review of one hundred years of diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the UK confirms that there have been sharp increases in gonorrhoea and syphilis since the historic lows of the 1990s, especially in gay and bisexual ...

  18 December 2018 | Gus Cairns

• Viral suppression key to preventing mother-to-child transmission, but food insecurity, TB and STIs may also be risk factors

  Reducing maternal viral load during pregnancy is the most important factor in preventing mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV, results of a large study published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal confirm. Other risk factors for MTCT included insufficient food, ...

  21 November 2018 | Michael Carter

• PROUD qualitative findings: PrEP’s impact on sexual behaviour

  Qualitative data from the PROUD study revealed that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is an important added prevention tool to strategies already in place for men in England having frequent condomless sex, according to a recent article in AIDS and Behavior. While approximately ...

  13 November 2018 | Krishen Samuel

• PrEP providers and communicators should stop talking about ‘risk’

  It’s unhelpful to frame the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in terms of ‘risky behaviour’, Sarit Golub, professor of psychology at the City University of New York told the HIV Research for Prevention conference (HIVR4P 2018) in Madrid ...

  29 October 2018 | Roger Pebody

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Sexual health news selected from other sources

• Growth of unprotected sex pushes up European syphilis rates

  A reduced fear among gay and bisexual men of catching HIV has led to riskier sex and higher rates of syphilis, a new report says. The disease can cause severe health complications if left untreated.

  15 July 2019 | Deutsche Welle

• People urged to practise safer sex after rise in STIs in England

  New data from Public Health England show there were around 448,000 cases of sexually transmitted infections diagnosed in 2018, an increase of 5% from 2017.

  04 June 2019 | Public Health England

• In China, Public Talk of Sex Is Rare. Could a ‘Pleasure Community’ Change That?

  In a room with soft lighting, decorated with fuzzy blankets and turquoise balloons, a group of 30 or so strangers gathered on a recent afternoon in Beijing to discuss a subject that is largely taboo in China: how to satisfy a woman sexually.

  03 June 2019 | New York Times

• FDA Approves First Throat and Rectal Tests for Detecting Chlamydia and Gonorrhea

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on May 23 that it had cleared the Aptima Combo 2 Assay and Xpert CT/NG to detect chlamydia and gonorrhea by using throat and rectum samples, potentially making it easier for physicians and public health programs to diagnose and treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that are often undertreated for lack of testing in those areas.

  02 June 2019 | The Body Pro

• England: Sexual Health Checks Fall By Almost 250,000 As Services Suffer Severe Cuts

  Sexual and reproductive health checks have fallen by 245,000 in three years, amid “swingeing” cuts to the vital services, new figures published by the Labour party show. Spending on the facilities by local authorities fell by £56 million over the past five years, according to House of Commons library data.

  14 May 2019 | Huffington Post

• UK couples having less frequent sex than 10 years ago

  "Young Brits are having less sex than a decade ago because they're too busy watching Netflix," reports the Sun. Researchers used survey data from almost 35,000 people aged 16 to 44 in the UK. The surveys were done in 1991, 2001 and 2012.

  10 May 2019 | NHS Behind the Headlines

• Pipeline for Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and Syphilis

  A new report on the sexually transmitted infection (STI) treatment and prevention research “pipeline” points to serious gaps in the development of new tools to address a growing epidemic in the U.S. The report, released today by Treatment Action Group (TAG), provides an assessment of the current research pipeline and calls for a major new investment in STI research.

  20 March 2019 | TAG

• Women Have High Syphilis Rates, Too

  For women in the general population, the incidence of syphilis is at a 20-year high. But for women with HIV — particularly those who inject drugs — the incidence is 330% higher than that, data from a long-term study show. The biggest indicators of syphilis in women are hepatitis C infection and injection drug use. This means that providers should tailor syphilis screening to women with indicators of injection drug use, particularly in regions of the country hardest hit by injection drug epidemics.

  11 March 2019 | Medscape (requires free registration)

• Gonorrhoea: drug resistance compromises recommended treatment in Europe

  In 2017, 27 EU/EEA countries collected and tested 3 248 gonococcal isolates which revealed that cefixime and azithromycin resistance (1.9% and 7.5% respectively) remained unchanged compared to 2016 (2.1% and 7.5%). However, the number of countries reporting resistant isolates for each antimicrobial increased. For the second year in a row, no isolates with resistance to ceftriaxone were detected in contrast to one in 2015, five in 2014 and seven in 2013.

  28 February 2019 | ECDC

• Low testosterone persists after HCV clearance

  Low levels of free testosterone are common among men with chronic hepatitis C infection following SVR and persist after HCV clearance, according to findings from a prospective, longitudinal cohort study.

  12 February 2019 | Healio

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