PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Q&A: Decline in condom use indicates need for further education, awareness

2024-02-28
(Press-News.org) New research from the University of Washington shows that condom use has been trending downward among younger gay and bisexual men over the last decade, even when they aren’t taking pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

The study, published Feb. 27 in AIDS and Behavior, measures changes in sex without condoms among HIV-negative gay and bisexual men who are not taking PrEP. Using data from the 2014-19 cycles of the American Men’s Internet Survey — a web-based survey of cisgender men ages 15 and older who have sex with men (MSM) — researchers found that roughly half of HIV-negative men reported using condoms at least sometimes in the last year. That was higher than the 15% of respondents who reported using PrEP.

But HIV-negative MSM men who are not using PrEP seem to be not using condoms increasingly often. The study found that the proportion of these men who had condomless sex increased 2.2% in the average year. Rates of people who weren’t using condoms was higher among younger and Latinos, 7.2% per year for young MSM ages 15 to 24, and 18.7% among young Latino gay and bisexual men.

Properly used condoms can prevent the spread of disease, including HIV; taking PrEP also reduces the likelihood of HIV transmission. The increase in condomless sex for men not on PrEP suggests potential new HIV transmission pathways, researchers said, and the concentration among young Latino men could expand existing health disparities.

UW News spoke with Steven Goodreau, lead author and UW professor of anthropology, to discuss the study, health equity and the importance of continued education about the benefits of using condoms during sex.

What are the barriers to PrEP uptake? Why is it important to not only remove those barriers but to also promote condom usage?

Steven Goodreau: Different things work for people in different circumstances and times of their lives. PrEP has many benefits. It’s something that doesn’t have to happen in the moment, something an individual can decide on instead of having to negotiate with a partner. Some people really don’t like condoms and aren’t going to use them, so PrEP provides another option for them. But like most pharmaceutical interventions, it means people need to know about it and be continuously tied to the healthcare system. There are all sorts of things happening in people’s lives — from unstable housing to dealing with mental health and substance use — that make taking a pill every day not the easiest thing to do. So, PrEP has positives but also challenges. The same with condoms. They’re far cheaper and much easier to access. For some people the lack of daily regimen is a plus. They prevent a much wider range of sexually transmitted infections, not just HIV. But they also take their own form of planning and negotiation. In the end, I see both as key to lowering HIV transmission rates.

Can you talk about the connection between condom promotion and health equity?

SG: The sense I have as a gay man working in public health research is that there’s a prevailing idea that everybody already knows about condoms and understands them, so there’s not much need to do any kind of further promotion anymore. There’s also this idea that they’re so readily available to everybody, that there isn’t much of an equity issue involved. In contrast, PrEP involves interacting with the healthcare system, with associated costs and time and ability to navigate and feel comfortable doing so. All those things are unequal in our society, so are a clear area for concerns about equity.

Our results show that a growing set of young gay and bisexual men, and especially young Latino gay and bisexual men, seem to be missing out on both interventions. And that pattern raises questions of equity. Our study can’t say exactly why, but the pattern is clear.  We must remember that every generation is starting anew with their knowledge about sexual health. If we have a generation that is coming of age when conversations about condoms that were common in the past haven’t been as present, then they aren’t starting with that broad familiarity. And if LGBTQ+ inclusive sex-ed, which covers HIV prevention for gay and bisexual men, isn’t evenly distributed in the population, then we indeed have equity concerns.

What kind of conversation do you hope this research sparks?

SG: Before PrEP came out, HIV prevention for gay and bisexual men had condoms as a central pillar — perhaps the central pillar — for about three decades. Of course, we were all tired of talking about them. So, I get why, when PrEP came out, it was seen as a miracle and the pendulum swung in that direction. But it’s a decade into PrEP delivery and I think it’s time to look at that and say, ‘Is it time for the pendulum to swing back a bit?’ I’d like people to have open, honest, sincere conversations about how much condom promotion we’ve been doing. What messages have we been putting out? What haven’t we been doing, and why? Is it because there aren’t folks who would benefit from those conversations, or are we just tired of having them? I hope for more conversations among folks at every level: federal, state and local health programs, community organizations and within communities themselves.

What strategies could potentially improve condom promotion?

SG: Some folks in public health think that gay and bisexual men just don’t want to hear about condoms anymore. That’s certainly true for some, but I don’t think it’s as broadly true as we assume. The first step is just a shift in that thinking. Beyond that, LGBTQ+ inclusive sex education is extremely important. Only about half of U.S. high schools have it, and that’s a key first place for young, gay and bisexual men to learn about the different prevention methods and what would work for them given where they are in life. This is a time when the barriers to PrEP are especially high for many people, so making sure that condoms are seen as a valuable and viable option is especially important.

Some dating apps that men use to find partners put the options for PrEP use or viral suppression upfront on the profile, and then the field indicating whether you want to use condoms either doesn’t exist or it isn’t nearly as prominent. That seems like a huge missed opportunity, both to actually share information condom use and to send the message that condoms are on par with these other sexual health tools. It also used to be easier to find condoms in every bar and club catering to gay men. They’re still there some of the time, but not as consistently, and there’s rarely any material explaining and promoting them.

In the end, it’s key to remember that things like condom use are highly subject to social norms — many people use what they see and hear from their peers and beyond as a guide for their own decisions. Even just a little bit more attention to the topic may help to get many of those conversations started again.

Co-authors of the paper were Michael Barry, a UW doctoral student of epidemiology; Devin Hamilton, UW senior research scientist and engineer in the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology; Austin Williams, Li Yan Wang and Kevin Delany of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Travis Sanchez, professor at Emory University; and David Katz, UW senior research scientist in the Department of Global Health. The study was funded by the CDC and the National Institute of Health.

For more information, contact Goodreau at goodreau@uw.edu.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Clearing the air reduces suicide rates

Clearing the air reduces suicide rates
2024-02-28
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Researchers in the United States and China have discovered a curious link between air pollution and suicide rates that prompts us to reconsider how to approach this issue. China’s efforts to reduce air pollution have prevented 46,000 suicide deaths in the country over just five years, the researchers estimate. The team used weather conditions to tease apart confounding factors affecting pollution and suicide rates, arriving at what they consider to be a truly causal connection. The results, published in Nature Sustainability, unearth air quality as a key factor influencing mental health. Issues ...

Efficient lithium-air battery under development to speed electrification of vehicles

2024-02-28
By Beth Miller With the U.S. government’s goal to reduce emissions from transportation as part of a net-zero climate goal by 2050, efficient and reliable batteries are a necessity. A collaborative team of researchers led by the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is working toward that goal by developing an energy storage system that would have a much higher energy density than existing systems. With $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Xianglin Li, associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, will lead a multi-institutional ...

80 mph speed record for glacier fracture helps reveal the physics of ice sheet collapse

80 mph speed record for glacier fracture helps reveal the physics of ice sheet collapse
2024-02-28
There’s enough water frozen in Greenland and Antarctic glaciers that if they melted, global seas would rise by many feet. What will happen to these glaciers over the coming decades is the biggest unknown in the future of rising seas, partly because glacier fracture physics is not yet fully understood. A critical question is how warmer oceans might cause glaciers to break apart more quickly. University of Washington researchers have demonstrated the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. The study, recently published in AGU Advances, shows that a 6.5-mile (10.5 kilometer) crack formed in 2012 on Pine Island Glacier — a retreating ice shelf that ...

Study unlocks nanoscale secrets for designing next-generation solar cells

2024-02-28
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Perovskites, a broad class of compounds with a particular kind of crystal structure, have long been seen as a promising alternative or supplement to today’s silicon or cadmium telluride solar panels. They could be far more lightweight and inexpensive, and could be coated onto virtually any substrate, including paper or flexible plastic that could be rolled up for easy transport. In their efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity, perovskites are becoming comparable to silicon, whose manufacture still requires long, complex, and ...

Scientists discover 18 new species of gut microbes in search for origins of antibiotic resistance

Scientists discover 18 new species of gut microbes in search for origins of antibiotic resistance
2024-02-28
Scientists from Mass Eye and Ear and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard found 18 novel species of a type of bacteria called enterococci, which are gut microbes found in most land animals. Enterococcus type bacteria are among the leading causes of antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide and 60 species had previously been identified. Understanding origins of antibiotic-resistant bacteria could offer insight into mechanisms of how drug-resistant, hospital-associated infections take root. Antibiotic-resistant infection is projected to catch up to cancer as the leading ...

For people with tough-to-treat epilepsy, seizure dogs may reduce seizures

2024-02-28
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS –  For people with drug-resistant epilepsy, having a dog companion trained in  detecting seizures and other epilepsy-related tasks may reduce the amount of seizures they have, according to new research published in the February 28, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. For the study, researchers looked at adults with severe epilepsy who have been unable to find effective treatment to reduce seizures. “Despite the development of numerous anti-seizure medications over the past 15 years, up to 30% of people ...

For young people, irregular meals, e-cigarette use linked to frequent headaches

2024-02-28
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – For children and teens, irregular meals such as skipped breakfasts are linked to an increased risk of frequent headaches, according to a new study published in the February 28, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that for those ages 12 to 17, substance use and exposure, specifically electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), were associated with frequent headaches. For the study, frequent headaches were defined as occurring more than once per week. “It ...

New study finds link between health care disparities and stroke treatment

2024-02-28
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – For people with stroke, social factors such as education, neighborhood and employment, may be linked to whether they receive treatment with clot-busting drugs according to a preliminary study released today, February 28, 2024, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 76th Annual Meeting taking place April 13–18, 2024, in person in Denver and online. The study looked at people with ischemic stroke, which ...

Prognostic model development and molecular subtypes identification in bladder urothelial cancer

Prognostic model development and molecular subtypes identification in bladder urothelial cancer
2024-02-28
“Our study introduces an oxidative stress-based prognostic model for bladder cancer, offering insights into personalized therapy.” BUFFALO, NY- February 28, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 3, entitled, “Prognostic model development and molecular subtypes identification in bladder urothelial cancer by oxidative stress signatures.” Mounting studies indicate that oxidative stress (OS) significantly ...

Study proposes streamlined approach to developing cancer drugs

Study proposes streamlined approach to developing cancer drugs
2024-02-28
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Drug discovery can be a frustrating process of trial and error. Scientists using fragment-based drug discovery link fragments of different molecules together to create a more potent drug but may not know whether a compound works until millions of dollars in research and development have already been spent. New University at Buffalo research may offer a more streamlined approach, allowing drug makers to determine the viability of a fragment-based design earlier in the process.  While developing a fragment-based drug to treat lung cancer, a team co-led by UB found that where they linked fragments together had a large effect on potency. “Despite ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

A new discovery about the source of the vast energy in cosmic rays

Cancer ‘fingerprint’ can improve early detection

Rethinking the brain pacemaker: How better materials can improve signals

Allostatic load, educational attainment, and risk of cancer mortality among us men

Flaw in computer memory leads to global security fixes

Race, ethnicity, and sleep in us children

Geriatric surgery verification program can improve outcomes for older cancer patients in community hospitals

Pew funds 8 teams to conduct collaborative biomedical research

Finding innovative ways to address kidney cancer leads to DoD grant

Americans are uninformed about and undervaccinated for HPV

KTU scientists developed a nanolaser: silver nanocubes enable light generation

Insilico Medicine nominates orally available pre-clinical candidate targeting NLRP3 to treat inflammation and central nervous system diseases

PLOS receives $3.3 million grant to support Open Access publishing & business model transformation

HBx facilitates drug resistance in hepatocellular carcinoma via CD133-regulated self-renewal of liver cancer stem cells

ASN congratulates members for their role in the development of the Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

Late-stage breast cancer diagnosis on the rise in US

Brain volume changes seen in opioid users

Ultra-processed foods may drive colorectal cancer risk, USF-TGH study finds

Two Case Western Reserve University faculty members honored as Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors

How this cancer drug could make radiation a slam dunk therapy

National TRAP Program funds large-scale cleanup of discarded fishing gear

Using ‘biological age’ to predict early colorectal cancer risk

National Academy of Inventors announces Class of 2024 Fellows

SwRI showcases capabilities, evaluates novel fire-safety method with customized test

Caring for the emotional and spiritual needs of family members of ICU patients

Navigating crises: The financial adaptations of NGOs during the COVID-19 pandemic

Early life exposure to toxic chemicals may cause behavioral, psychological problems

AI predicts Earth’s peak warming

Risk of coronary artery disease in patients with liver cirrhosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Wild birds’ gut microbiome linked with its ornamentation and body condition

[Press-News.org] Q&A: Decline in condom use indicates need for further education, awareness