Risky Sexual Practice, Sexually Transmitted Infection and Associated Factors Among Newly Diagnosed HIV-positive People in Northwest Ethiopia

Nurilign Abebe Moges; Olubukola Adeponle Adesina; Michael A Okunlola; Yemane Berhane; Joshua Odunayo Akinyemi

doi:10.2147/HIV.S267215

Risky Sexual Practice, Sexually Transmitted Infection and Associated Factors Among Newly Diagnosed HIV-positive People in Northwest Ethiopia

HIV AIDS (Auckl). 2020 Sep 18:12:431-439. doi: 10.2147/HIV.S267215. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Nurilign Abebe Moges^{1

2}, Olubukola Adeponle Adesina^{3

4}, Michael A Okunlola^{3

4}, Yemane Berhane⁵, Joshua Odunayo Akinyemi⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia.
² Pan African University Life and Earth Sciences Institute, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
³ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
⁴ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria.
⁵ Department of Epidemiology, Addis Continental Institute of Public Health, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
⁶ Department of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Faculty of Public Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Abstract

Purpose: Risky sexual practice expose for the acquisition of sexually transmitted infection (STI) including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This study was conducted to fill the knowledge gap on the prevalence of risky sexual practice, STIs and associated factors among newly diagnosed HIV-positive people in northwest Ethiopia.

Patients and methods: This study was a cross-sectional study design which was conducted on 745 newly diagnosed HIV patients. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to interview patients within seven days of HIV diagnosis using client exit interview approach. Data were entered to EpiData and exported to SPSS version 24 for analysis. Binary logistic regression analysis was employed to select factors for multivariate logistic regression at p-value of less than 0.25. Two separate logistic regression models were used for risky sexual practice and STI as dependent variables. The strength of statistical association was quantified using an adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with a 95% confidence level.

Results: The prevalence of risky sexual practices and STIs among newly diagnosed HIV-positive people were 15.8% (95%CI: 13.1-18.4) and 6.6% (95%CI: 4.8-8.5), respectively. Although there were no statistically significant factors associated with STI, having two or more lifetime sexual partners (AOR=3.19; 95%CI: 1.57-6.49) and frequent use of alcohol (AOR=3.10; 95%CI: 1.34-7.19) were the factors associated with risky sexual practice.

Conclusion: Risky sexual practice and STI were found to be low among newly identified HIV patients. Factors associated with risky sexual practice failed to explain STI diagnosis using the syndromic approach. Therefore, revisiting the definition of risky sexual practice is necessary for the universal test and treat approach since sustained viral suppression may leave the need for consistent use of condoms among HIV patients who are on ART especially with regular sexual partners. Further study is also recommended to measure changes in sexual practice after initiating antiretroviral therapy.

Keywords: Ethiopia; STI; newly diagnosed HIV patients; risky sexual behavior.