At any given time, a significant percentage of men are engaging in
multiple sexual partnerships with women -- a situation that may
facilitate the spread of sexually transmitted infections, including
HIV. Researchers looked at The National Survey of Family Growth, a national database that interviewed 4,928 men in the United States. In the survey, men reported the first and last date they had sexual
intercourse with each of their sexual partners during the year before
the interview. Though the actual reported rate of such behavior in the study
is 6.6 percent, the authors of the study estimate from adjusted
measurements that up to 11 percent of men may have been involved with
multiple sexual partners at some point during the previous year. Concurrent sexual relationships may have huge implications when it comes to the spread of sexually transmitted disease. "Concurrent partnerships are an important sexual network
characteristic because of the way they connect people to each other,"
says lead study author Dr. Adaora Adimora, clinical associate professor
of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Public Health. "These kinds of relationships can spread HIV through a population faster than the same number of monogamous relationships."This quicker spread is, in many ways, a simple function of time."For example, three concurrent partnerships will spread HIV
faster than three monogamous relationships back-to-back, because if a
person only has sequential partners and he gets HIV, he won't give it
to another partner until he ends his relationship and strikes up a new
one," Adimora explains. "If the individual has concurrent partnerships,
he can immediately give the next partner HIV without waiting to end the
first relationship."Some public health experts hope the study will offer a new direction for efforts to stem the spread of HIV."I think that this study is highly significant," says Bruce
Dezube, associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center in Boston, Mass. "It's amazing to me how much progress
we have made with HIV drugs -- we have over 30 drugs available and 5
different mechanisms to treat patients -- but the one thing we haven't
figured out is human behavior." Not all infectious disease experts agree, however, that the results of the study are a surprise. SOURCE OF THIS STORY
