OBJECTIVE To describe the HIV/AIDS epidemic in mainland China. METHODS We review the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the social characteristics and geographic distribution of at-risk groups in China based on published literature and unpublished official data. RESULTS Injection drug use has been the dominant route for HIV infection in China, and will continue to be a major risk factor...

Sero-prevalence of HIV was tested among 16,170 individuals. They included 215 patients with sexually transmitted diseases (STD), 77 I/V drug users, 21 commercial sex workers, 987 patients on haemodialysis, 119 subjects referred for HIV testing, 12,482 voluntary blood donors, 360 ante-natal attenders, 73 tuberculosis patients, 674 Pakistanis travelling abroad and 1162 persons who had received mu...

BACKGROUND Epidemiological studies suggest that allogeneic immunity may inhibit HIV-1 transmission from mother to baby and is less frequent in multiparous than uniparous women. Alloimmune responses may also be elicited during unprotected heterosexual intercourse, which is associated ex vivo with resistance to HIV infection. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS The investigation was carried out in w...

Is sexual orientation associated with structural differences in the brain? To address this question, 80 homosexual and heterosexual men and women (16 homosexual men and 15 homosexual women) underwent structural MRI. We used voxel-based morphometry to test for differences in grey matter concentration associated with gender and sexual orientation. Compared with heterosexual women, homosexual wome...

BACKGROUND Traditional survey methods may cause refusals to respond or untruthful replies when encounter the sensitive questions. The Randomized Response Technique (RRT) is designed to decrease social desirability bias and obtain reliable estimates. This study aimed to apply these new methods on the sensitive questions survey. METHODS Simmons model was applied in the survey of issues relevant...

To answer the question ‘‘Who’s gay?’’—and its logical follow-up, ‘‘Does it matter?’’—researchers usually define homosexuality with reference to one of three components or expressions of sexual orientation: sexual/romantic attraction or arousal, sexual behavior, and sexual identity. Yet, the three components are imperfectly correlated and inconsistently predictive of each other, resulting in dis...

OBJECTIVES To describe the features of an outbreak of early syphilis in North Manchester. METHODS Retrospective KC60 and case note review. RESULTS In a 25 month period, 10 cases of primary, 22 of secondary, and nine cases of early latent syphilis were diagnosed. 39 were homosexual or bisexual men, 20 being co-infected with HIV. Most infections were acquired locally and in 19/41 cases oral s...

San Francisco (SF) has been chosen as the site for modeling HIV transmission in homosexual men because very good data are available there . The large open community of homosexual men in SF has been the source of numerous sexual behavior surveys . Additionally, data are available in SF for AIDS incidence each year and for HIV incidence as early as 1978 . In this application of the simulation mod...

Analyses of 24-hour specimens of urine from healthy adult males for androsterone and etiocholanolone produced values which, when calculated as discriminant scores, discriminated between heterosexual and exclusively homosexual individuals. This confirms a previous study.No significant differences were found between heterosexuals and homosexuals in parental ages, secondary sex characteristics, ge...

The goal of the present study was to compare the relative distress of homosexual and heterosexual Brazilian men and women on scenarios in which they imagined their partners sexually or emotionally involved with another person, using a forced-choice paradigm and continuous measures. Participants were 68 heterosexual men, 72 heterosexual women, 42 homosexual men, and 35 homosexual women. On the f...