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Correlates of Serosorting and Knowledge of Sexual Partner’s HIV Status Among Men Who have Sex with Men in Ukraine

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Abstract

Ukraine has among the highest rates of newly diagnosed HIV infections in the WHO European region. Men who have sex with men (MSM) is the least studied group in the context of the HIV epidemics in Ukraine. The present paper aims to estimate the prevalence and correlates of knowledge of sexual partner’s HIV status and potentially discordant anal intercourse (failure to serosort) among MSM. Data of the cross-sectional study among 8100 MSM in Ukraine in 2013 were used for this analysis. Less than half of the participants (42.5%) reported that they knew the HIV serostatus of their most recent male sexual partner, and about 13% of participants reported failure to serosort during their most recent anal sexual intercourse with a male partner. Targeted interventions can be implemented to increase knowledge about sexual partner’s HIV status, both among HIV-negative and HIV-positive MSM, to reduce the risk of HIV acquisition and transmission.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge ICF ‘‘Alliance for Public Health in Ukraine’’ for granting access to the data for secondary analysis. The study received training support from Fogarty International Center/NIH grants through the AIDS International Training and Research Program by SUNY-Downstate Medical Center (Grant #D43 TW000233).

Funding

The study received no funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, SUNY University at Albany, Rensselaer, NY, USA

    Olena Iakunchykova

  2. Department of Social Work, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA

    Viktor Burlaka

  3. School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Elizabeth J. King

Authors
  1. Olena Iakunchykova
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  2. Viktor Burlaka
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  3. Elizabeth J. King
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Correspondence to Olena Iakunchykova.

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Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Commission of the professional ethics of sociologist of Sociological Association of Ukraine and by the Commission for medical ethics of the Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases named after L.V. Gromashevsky at the Academy of Medical Sciences, Ukraine.

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The article doesn’t contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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All respondents have signed the informed consent after the detailed description of the study purposes and procedure.

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Iakunchykova, O., Burlaka, V. & King, E.J. Correlates of Serosorting and Knowledge of Sexual Partner’s HIV Status Among Men Who have Sex with Men in Ukraine. AIDS Behav 22, 1955–1964 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-017-2002-4

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