RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Transactional sex among men who have sex with men participating in the CohMSM prospective cohort study in West Africa
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 630517
DO 10.1101/630517
A1 Cheick Haïballa Kounta
A1 Luis Sagaon-Teyssier
A1 Pierre-Julien Coulaud
A1 Marion Mora
A1 Gwenaelle Maradan
A1 Michel Bourrelly
A1 Abdoul Aziz keita
A1 Stéphane-Alain Babo Yoro
A1 Camille Anoma
A1 Christian Coulibaly
A1 Elias Ter Tiero Dah
A1 Selom Agbomadji
A1 Ephrem Mensah
A1 Adeline Bernier
A1 Clotilde Couderc
A1 Bintou Dembélé Keita
A1 Christian Laurent
A1 Bruno Spire
A1 the CohMSM Study Group
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/05/07/630517.abstract
AB Men who have sex with men (MSM) are at much greater risk of HIV infection in Africa. Little is known about their involvement in transactional sex (TS). We aimed to characterize MSM reporting TS (MSM-TS) and to identify factors associated with their sexual practices using data from the prospective cohort study CohMSM conducted in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Togo. Our study focused on HIV-negative MSM, recruited between 06/2015 and 01/2018 by a team of trained peer educators. Scheduled study visits at 6, 12 and 18 months included medical examinations, HIV screening, risk-reduction counselling and face-to-face interviews to collect information on their sociodemographic characteristics, sexual behaviours, and HIV risk-reduction strategies. Three stigmatization sub-scores were constructed. The generalized estimating equation method was used for data analysis. Of the 630 HIV-negative participants recruited at baseline, 463, 410 and 244 had a follow-up visit at 6- and 12- and 18-months, respectively. Over a total of 1747 visits, 478 TS encounters were reported by 289 MSM-TS (45.9%). Of the latter, 91 participants reported systematic TS (31.5%), 55 (19.0 %) stopped reporting TS after baseline, and 53 (18.3%) reported TS after baseline. Ninety participants (31.1 %) reported occasional TS. After adjusting for country of study and follow-up visits, the following factors, reported for the previous 6 months, were associated with a greater likelihood of TS: younger age, an educational level <high-school diploma, satisfaction with current sex life, group sex with men, multiple male sexual partners, condomless anal sex, receptive or versatile anal sex with male sexual partners, giving benefits in exchange for sex with a man, alcohol consumption and drug use during sex, and experiencing stigmatization. The majority of MSM in this study who received benefits in exchange for sex had high-risk HIV infection exposure practices and were characterized by socioeconomic difficulties.