HAART and Sexual Risk Behavior
- Catherine Diamond, MD, MPH
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diamondc@uci.edu
Department of Medicine
Divisions of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology
University of California
Irvine
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
To the Editor: Dr Crepaz and colleagues conclude that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–infected patients taking highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) did not exhibit increased sexual risk behavior, even when therapy achieved an undetectable viral load.1 In their discussion, the authors state that medical factors, such as duration of HAART or disease stage, might elucidate their findings because patients initiating HAART may have symptomatic illness that decreases their interest in sex.
In a recent study, my colleagues and I examined the relationship between unprotected sex (defined as anal or vaginal sex without a condom within the past 3 months) and antiretroviral use in a cross-sectional survey conducted in 874 randomly selected, sexually active patients at 6 public HIV clinics in California in 1998-1999.2 We found a decreased odds ratio (OR) for unprotected sex with both antiretroviral use (OR, 0.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.4-0.7) and self-reported undetectable HIV RNA …
