The purpose of this paper is to describe working conditions, health outcomes, social, and psychological factors related to HIV risk among Asian women who work at massage parlors in San Francisco. We conducted environmental mapping to identify communities and massage parlors where Asian women work as masseuses, and conducted survey interviews with 100 masseuses using venue-based snowball samplin...

BACKGROUND Male circumcision has been shown to reduce the transmission of HIV from women to men through vaginal sex by approximately 60%. There is concern that men may engage in risk compensation after becoming circumcised, diminishing the benefits of male circumcision. METHODS AND FINDINGS We conducted qualitative interviews with 30 sexually active circumcised men in Kisumu, Kenya from March...

BACKGROUND The high and continually increasing prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted diseases among men who have sex with men (MSM) in China underscores the critical importance of examining the exact sexual networks that result in HIV transmission, as well as HIV infection, using powerful sampling methods, such as respondent-driven sampling (RDS), to im...

Sexual health is an integral part of general health that influences wellbeing and overall quality of life in men and women. Numerous internet articles provide ‘factual information’ claiming that sex can do wonders for the wellbeing of men: sex can reduce anxiety; sex can make you happy; sex can soothe your immunity; sex can decrease neuroticism and sex can reduce prostate cancer risk. Some of t...

BACKGROUND To assess prevalence of condom-associated erection loss and to identify correlates of erection loss among men attending a sexually transmissible infections (STI) clinic. METHODS Men (n = 278) attending an STI clinic responded to an anonymous questionnaire aided by a CD recording of the questions. The sample was screened to include only men who had used a condom during penile-vagina...

Sexual health is an integral part of general health that influences wellbeing and overall quality of life in men and women. Numerous internet articles provide ‘factual information’ claiming that sex can do wonders for the wellbeing of men: sex can reduce anxiety; sex can make you happy; sex can soothe your immunity; sex can decrease neuroticism and sex can reduce prostate cancer risk. Some of t...

INTRODUCTION We aimed to determine differences in sexual practices, HIV sexual risk behaviors, and HIV risk profile of adolescents and young persons' in rural and urban Nigeria. METHODOLOGY We recruited 772 participants 15 to 24 years old from urban and rural townships in Nigeria through a household survey. Information on participants' socio-demographic profile (age sex, residential area, num...

OBJECTIVES Female anorectal Chlamydia trachomatis (chlamydia) infections are common irrespective of recent anal sex. We explored the role of anorectal infections in chlamydia transmission and estimated the impact of interventions aimed at improved detection and treatment of anorectal infections. METHODS We developed a pair compartmental model of heterosexuals aged 15-29 years attending STI cl...

Nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) is a common clinical syndrome, but no etiological agent is identified in a significant proportion of cases. Whether the spectrum of pathogens differs between heterosexual men (MSW) and men who have sex with men (MSM) is largely unstudied but of considerable clinical relevance. A retrospective review was done using the electronic medical record database of Melbourn...

OBJECTIVES This study estimated the prevalence and sociodemographic characteristics of young people in South Africa who have experienced parental death and examined associations between parental death and young people's HIV status and sexual behaviors. DESIGN AND METHODS Data were from a cross-sectional nationally representative household survey of 11,904 15- to 24-year-old South Africans. Su...